Opportunity and fear…

Time to Go Big…

Fear was on my mind on my walk today, I was thinking about a coaching client of mine.

She is faced with an opportunity right now and when it was brought to her she was immediately hit with fear.

On our call today, she told me all of the wild thoughts that threw themselves at her at warp speed when she first got the call with this opportunity.

Before I share her thoughts with you (and yes, she gave me approval to do so) I feel it’s important to know that there is NO MONEY at stake, there are NO CONTRACTS being signed, DEATH could not be a result, hell INJURY isn’t even a possibility.

Back to her attacking thoughts…these are the primary thoughts that hurled themselves at her…

• ‘What if it only seems like an opportunity but it’s not?’
• ‘What if it’s too much work and doesn’t fit into my life how I want it to?”
• “What if I hate it?”
• “What if it fails?”
• “What if I waste my time?’

…You get the idea.

Fear is such a huge factor in our lives…it becomes a great reason NOT to do things, get involved, connect, try…live.

The funny thing to me is how we phrase our fears…here are some examples of what we tell ourselves…

• ‘I’m scared to fly’
  (No you’re not…you’re scared to die)
• ‘I’m scared to love’
  (No you’re not…you’re scared that you won’t be loved back)
• ‘I’m scared to try a new sport, language, hobby, business.’
  (No you’re not your scared you’ll look stupid)
• ‘I’m scared to start my own business.’
  (No you’re not…you’re scared you’ll fail)
• ‘I’m scared to reach out to that casting director’
  (No you’re not…you’re scared they’ll tell you you’re not talented)
• ‘I’m scared to tell them how much I love them’
  (No you’re not…you’re scared they won’t care)
• ‘I’m scared to commit to __________.’
  (No you’re not, you’re scared if you commit you lose the power to choose)

And the list goes on…

We attach fear to the wrong thing…we attach it to the action when really what we are scared of is some potential negative feeling/emotion/result.

If we took EVERYTHING that anyone claims they are scared of I guarantee it boils down to a few basic fears:

• Fear of death or injury (to you or someone you love).
• Fear of rejection
• Fear of looking stupid
• Fear of failure

Boiled down even further…what we are scared of in one word is PAIN.

And the thing about people is, for the most part, we will most likely take action to avoid PAIN than we will to achieve pleasure.

BUT BUT BUT

Isn’t living life in a LESS THAN way PAINFUL?

It is for me…it sucks…I hate it…I wish I got zapped with electricity every time I chose the pain of safety over the possibility of pain with something new or out of the box that could bring me great joy.

That’s what I mean by ‘Go Big’…to me ‘Going Big’ means choosing to go toward what has a chance to bring me great joy even though it may not…because if I don’t ‘Go Big’ I am guaranteed 1 thing and 1 thing only, and that is the pain of living a life that is ‘less than’.

So my questions for you today are:

What does ‘Go Big’ mean to you?

Remember the Go Big End of Year Challenge: In what small way (maybe in less than 15 minutes) can you push your comfort zone and choose to ‘Go Big’ today?

Go Big!

Kristen

P.S. My Go Big VIP Program is filling up and I am doing something special.  The next 50 people that join and commit to ‘Go Big Now’ and not wait until after the holidays will get a special 1-on-1 strategy session with me in January to give you that extra advantage you need to make 2010 the best it can be. Get on board as one of the next 50 here: http://www.gobigcoach.com/gobignow

Success in 15 minutes a day — will you commit to yourself?

Experiment time!

There are 39 days left in 2009…

I thought an experiment to see how far you can move forward while still enjoying the holiday season was appropriate!

First let me ask you this question…

If I told you that you could significantly move your life forward between now and January 1, 2010 and it would only take 15 minutes a day…

Would you commit to dedicating 15 minutes a day EVERY DAY for the next 39 days?

I’m going to assume you answered ‘Yes’!

So this is what we are going to do…

Starting today and going through Dec. 31, 2009 I want you to do 1 thing each day to move yourself forward…

Here are the rules:

• You MUST do 1 thing each day
• The ‘Thing’ you do MUST take 15 minutes or less to do…
• The ‘Thing’ you do MUST push your comfort zone
• The ‘Thing’ you do MUST make you feel like you have somehow moved yourself forward toward one of your goals

Got it?

It is up to you if you are going to focus on one area of your life to move forward for the next 39 days or if you are going to focus in several directions…

Either way, you WILL see a huge difference IF you absolutely commit to do this AND you follow through.

To help you out, I want you to leave a comment now stating that you are taking part in the challenge and what your focus is.  I also want you to tell me what it is you will do today.

This is another case of you are either in or you aren’t…

I know it’s tough love…but if you are just going to try to commit 15 minutes a day, you aren’t going to get where you want to go…

15 minutes…to move toward the life of your dreams…

• I KNOW you can do this…
• Commit to it now…
• Leave a comment…
• Tell me you’re in…
• Tell me your focus…
• Tell me what you will do today!

Have fun with this!!

YOU ARE EXTRAORDINARY!

Go Big!

Kristen

P.S. Accountability is the key to success…get into my group program and I’ll hold you accountable and get on the phone with you every month to make sure you are on the right path.  Let’s shift your success from a maybe to a definite!  The monthly call is coming up so get in now…

http://www.gobigcoach.com/gobignow

Nobody Makes it Out Alive…

I was out to dinner with a friend last night and in the middle of a conversation about life and living life to the fullest, she jokingly said something that was quite brilliant…

She said, “We all might as well go for EVERYTHING we want, because when it comes down to life, nobody makes it out alive!”

Once I stopped laughing, it hit me how true that was…

We all get so stressed about everthing under the sun…

• We worry…
• We obsess…
• We doubt…
• We settle…

There’s so much at stake…

What if we fail?

What if we don’t make enough money?

What if people laugh at us?

What if we look stupid?

What if, what if, what if?

Here’s the deal…

It doesn’t matter if what you want is to attract money fast, live your passion, travel the world, fall madly in love or all of the above and more…

It’s true…

Nobody makes it out alive…

Now it’s your choice if that is a depressing thought or a freeing one…

Fill your life with life and it will be worth it!

Make bold choices, be the person you wish you were, believe what you need to believe to be everything that you know in your heart you are.

Know that with stuggle comes triumph and triumph can also come without struggle…

Yup, I said it…it doesn’t always have to be hard!

What makes you happy?

Do more of it…

What makes you feel fulfilled?

Do more of that…

What is your gift or gifts?

Do everything you can to spend most of your time expressing them (incidentally, that’s when money will follow)…

You can be, have and do everything you desire…

And, since nobody makes it out alive, what do you have to lose?

Leave me a comment, let me hold you accountable, share your vision and goals…

I know that everything you see in your mind is possible!

Go Big!

Kristen

You Won’t Save the World by Giving Your Solution Away for Free

Have I already hit a sore spot?

I know it’s a touchy subject when it comes to making money from your passion, and I hit on it slightly in one of my posts a few weeks ago and I’m still getting emails about it.

So what’s the nerve I’ve hit?

I’ll tell you…

You won’t save the world by giving your solution away for free!

We’ve been doing all of this work on finding your passion and making money from it and discovering how you can help people…

In other words, defining what solution you have to someone else’s problem…

I do one-on-one and group coaching to help people do all of this and time and time again one of my clients will say to me…

‘But I want to make the world a better place and if I have a solution that someone else needs, shouldn’t I give it to them for free?’

YIKES!

NO!

Here’s the deal…

Do I want you to take advantage of people?

No, of course not!

But the fact of the matter is you are NEVER going to make the world a better place by giving your solution away for free for 2 main reasons…

1. If you give it away for free, how long do you think you’ll be able to keep giving it away? Honestly, won’t you end up depleted of resources like time and money and energy if you go this route? I say this to my coaching clients like a mantra, “When you fly in an airplane, there’s a reason they tell you to put the oxygen mask on your self first.”

2. People don’t have anything at stake if it’s free and if you REALLY want to help people they have to have something at stake.

Now before you argue with me on that second point, I have proof…

Years ago, I had enough people ask me why I didn’t give my coaching for free so I thought it would be an interesting experiment. I invited 10 people to work with me one-on-one for free. This normally would have been a $5000 investment for them to work with me, but I agreed to have them pay that amount once they finished the program and saw what it could do for them.

What do you think happened?

Well…the first 2 weeks went quite well, everyone stayed accountable and took the action I gave them to take and then…

Well, let’s just say that after 5 weeks I was putting all my time and effort into chasing them down.

I called a group session together and asked them what they thought the problem was…

I’ll be completely honest about the response…

• 1 of the men in the group said that I just wasn’t the coach for him
• 1 woman said that she realized she really didn’t want to do what it would take to be an enterpreneur
• 1 younger guy didn’t even call into the group session
• And the 7 remaining people agreed that because they didn’t have any skin in the game, the program had gone to the bottom of their priority list…

They literally told me that because they didn’t have their investment in the program pressuring them to follow through, they just weren’t making it a priority at all.

Ultimately, as a group, we called off the experiment and 3 of the people made the investment to start working with me…

The results?

2 of them now have extremely successful businesses and the third didn’t follow through anyway so I let him out of the program.

So, I’ll say this a million times if I have to…

If you have a solution that will help people, and you really want to help as many people as you possible can, the results will be much better for everyone if you don’t give it to them for free!

I’m all for giving and charity, but that isn’t what this is about…

You don’t have to charge huge amounts of money, but it does need to be enough that it inspires the person to follow through and actually use the solution you have offered them…

If you want to make money from your passion, please take this to heart…

Put the oxygen mask on yourself first and then get out there and you’ll be able to help all the people you can reach!

Leave me a comment or shoot me an email to let me know how you feel about this, it’s a hot button topic and I want to open up a conversation about it!

Go Big!

Kristen