I was reading an article in Psychology Today last night regarding Self-Sabotage (I’d include the link, but the issue just arrived and there’s no mention of it on the PT site yet), and I coincidentally notice a lot of it in my life recently.  Like the ebb and flow of life itself, doubt and self-sabotage come and go in waves. One week we’re operating on pure power – like the fire inside broke through our cracks and we’re burning to reach our goals.  The next week we’re discouraged, so we find something that “comforts” us – 90% of the time that comfort ends up derailing our progress.  The derailment makes giving up look that much more appealing.

In this light, I went searching for what people use, read, watch, and do to stay motivated in the face of challenges. I stumbled onto some amazing images, and I’d like to share them here for you all to enjoy.  I think I’ll make this a regular column here. “Get Inspired” is a great piece to make recurring, right

What images or quotes do you find keep you motivated? Do you have a favorite? Share yours in the comments below!

Technorati Tags: affirmations, attitude, awareness, being bold, clearing doubt, dream, faith, goals, happiness, inspiration, motivation, perception, personal power, positive thinking, reflection, resistance, success, wisdom

The challenge has been set forth over at www.blakehammerton.com – my personal site for Applied Happiness Coaching (and hypnosis). The challenge is to be an everyday hero for 5 days (Wednesday through Sunday) and report back.  I invite you all to stand up for the common man, and practice acts of selflessness, kindness, courage and integrity.

This video blew my mind earlier this week, and it prompted the Everyday Hero Challenge.  I’m going to consider this a trial-run of the challenge. If it gets good reviews in the comments and on facebook, I’ll make it a regular event with prizes and awards.

So head over here and read about the challenge. Then leave your examples, thoughts, and heroic stories in the comments there!

Peace, Love, and a million successes to you!

Blake

Technorati Tags: appreciation, attitude, awareness, being bold, coaching, goals, gratitude, inspiration, lessons, personal power, reflection, success, teaching, wisdom

Benny Gold: Stay Gold from hypebeast.tv on Vimeo.

Today’s inspiration comes from Vimeo (I know there have been a lot of videos lately) and focuses on Benny Gold.  He’s a NYC designer that started his own brand because it was something he loved. He felt the passion for his own creative expression, so he followed it – through the boredom of working life, and the struggles of being so meticulous. The message here: If you find something you’re passionate about, and love doing, don’t stop driving toward it. You’ll make it. Guaranteed.

Peace, Love, and a million successes to you all.

Blake

Technorati Tags: appreciation, attitude, attraction, being bold, business, clearing doubt, dream, faith, goals, inspiration, lesson, motivation, personal power, success, wisdom

Neil Pasricha talks on TED about the 3 A’s of awesome in life. This is such a perfect way to kick off 2011. It’s much more than winning the Lotto (although that would be pretty awesome) or winning the Heisman trophy. It’s really the little things in life that make up all the awesomeness. It’s the awareness and appreciation of the little things that make the big things mean so much. In 2011, I encourage you all to become aware and appreciative of the little things around you! 2011 is the year to CREATE anything you want in your life.

Peace, Love, and a million successes to you all.

Blake

Technorati Tags: attitude, awareness, awesome, being bold, goals, happiness, lesson, love, personal power, positive thinking, reflection, success, video

Click The Image to Vote!

We’ve been nominated for Intuit’s Love a Local Business competition to receive a $5,000 grant for our upcoming project! It would be incredibly powerful to win this grant and be entered into the drawing to possibly receive an additional $25,000 in grant money. Holy cow! We could really change some lives with that kind of capital!

So there are plenty of ways to get the votes in. Click the image at the top of this post and your vote will be counted. You can also head to our Facebook fanpage and click the link there. Even cooler, however, is to text in your vote!

Text happiness to 244326. There will be an automatic reply where it will ask for your name, and another reply asking you to say why you love Applied Happiness. That’s it! It’s totally FREE, and almost too easy not to do.

We are truly grateful for the love and support we’ve received in all our community projects so far, and with this grant money we’ll be able to start and finish even bigger and better projects. Send this out to everyone you know, and let’s get this started right!

Technorati Tags: appreciation, attitude, being bold, coaching, dream, fund raising, gratitude, happiness, success

Three Days Left

The “Declare & Conquer” workshop is only three days away!  This Thursday night we’ll be at the Palatine Community Center revealing the secrets to overcoming obstacles and reaching what you truly desire in your life. This two-hour class is designed to help you define what you really want, discover what’s stopping you from getting it, and equip you with the tools and resources to make it happen.  Have you ever felt a little “stuck” and wondered how you were going to get moving again?  Has what you wanted been just out of reach? This is exactly what the workshop is designed to help change.  We’re going to introduce the tools of the extraordinary – the secrets of the movers and shakers in the world.  This is such a powerful class that we can’t believe we’re practically giving it away at $30 a person! Oh, and speaking of giving things away, we have gifts for every attendee, and a chance to win more stuff the day of the class!  Head over to our EVENTS page, and REGISTER!

Not in Palatine?

Fear not, friends.  We’re going to turn this into a downloadable course, and offer many of our subsequent classes as webinars in the future.  However, this is the last workshop for this year! In order to get the hands-on learning, interactive atmosphere, and the free gifts, you have to register and get to Palatine.  If you have any questions, please feel free to email Blake directly. We hope to see you all there!

Declare & Conquer Workshop – Thursday, October 28th 7-9pm
Palatine Community Center
250 E Wood Street
Palatine, IL 60067

With Excitement,
The Applied Happiness Team

P.S. If you add a friend when you register, we’ll take $5 off each registration!!  So tell your friends, spread the word, Like us on Facebook – get the message out there!

Technorati Tags: awareness, clearing doubt, coaching, facebook, goals, inspiration, lessons, motivation, personal power, reflection, success, teaching, workshop

Have you ever noticed people that jet-set across continents, whether for business, pleasure, or a mixture of both, never seem to lose grip on what they want? They have a clear vision of what they are looking for, and nothing seems to phase them. They’re not chasing a dream – they’re choosing and declaring what they want. Are you choosing what you want, or chasing a dream?

Here’s a better way to look at it: are you consciously choosing life and power, or are you falling victim to circumstance on your journey to your dream destination? Do things happen to you, or do you make things happen?  This is the elemental difference between reacting to life, and responding to it.  While they sound similar, they’re actually worlds apart.  Reacting to life is knee-jerk, emotional, and often comes with blame and elected helplessness – i.e. “it wasn’t my fault that didn’t work; there was nothing I could do – it’s your fault.”  Responding to life is taking responsibility for your place and impact in the world around you. It’s about noticing what is trying to emerge in every interaction (good and bad), and what energy and choice you made, and can make to impact it further.

Many people throw around the phrase, “everything happens for a reason,” electing to acknowledge that there must be something at work below the surface, but moments later find it impossible to see meaning in seemingly random events they don’t like.  I ask what the difference is.  It feels like it’s a type of selective responsibility – one in which you can claim power in accomplishment, but relinquish the responsibility in disappointment.  Look, if you’re not in command of your life, who is?

Wanna change it all?  Tired of struggling to find a better way? Do you want to actually reach those lofty goals?  Do you want to make it happen without relying on the miracle of a winning Lotto ticket falling in your lap?  Take responsibility for your life – your actions, choices, thoughts, judgments, dreams – all of it.  The good, the bad, the ugly – it’s your life, and you’re at the wheel.  Instead of chasing down what you want and reacting to the obstacles before you, choose the life you want, and respond to those same obstacles – this is the art of turning foes into allies, hurt into help, and rags into riches.

In everything you do, you’re committing to one thing or another.  Everything you give permission to (saying yes), you are also denying permission (saying no) to something else.  When you are chasing a dream you just can’t seem to reach, you’re saying yes and no to everything along the way – yes to failure, no to success; yes to struggle, no to learning; yes to familiarity (same old story), no to change / uncertainty etc.

So I leave you with an assignment:

1. With every interaction you have with people, places, things, events, circumstances – everything. notice what choices you’re making, and what you’re committing to.  Is it what you want? Are you choosing or chasing?
2. If (and when) something doesn’t go your way, immediately take a deep breath and ask yourself what is trying to emerge.  Are you going to respond and choose, or react as a pawn in the game?

I can’t reiterate this line enough:  It’s your life and if you’re not in command of it, who is?

“Sedit qui timuit ne non succederet. Audentes fortuna iuvat.” – He who feared he would not succeed, sat still. Fortune favors the bold.

Blake

Technorati Tags: attitude, attraction, being bold, choice, dream, faith, goals, lesson, personal power, reaction, reflection, responsibility, success, Virgil

I have made it so far through the book, that it’s about time I started getting the word out about it. I am asking for help in getting it published and on store shelves.  The additional funds will be used to get the new Suicide Prevention and Life Celebration charity started.  These are exciting times, and I would be honored if any one of my readers became a contributor.

“The Unlimited Landscape – Exploring the power within you” is about the journey to that ‘more to life’ place we’re all searching for. Sometimes it’s a quest for success. Sometimes it’s a search for deeper meaning in the world around you. Often it’s a combination of many things. This book is an experiential piece – filled with exercises and lessons to guide you in discovering your potential, and explore that power. It is written with humor and sarcasm because that’s the kind of guy I am – as if we needed another sarcastic writer in the world, right?

The book is really a stepping-stone for Applied Happiness, and myself. I am raising money to get the book published and on shelves, but I’m also using any additional funds to put together a charity for Suicide Prevention and the celebration of life. I feel in my soul that the emotions in this project, and the passion of the positive paradigm, will make the future charity possible – and I would be honored if you were a founding contributor to our success.

Please check out the fund page by clicking the book cover image above. There are incentives to donors as well. We have three packages that allow you to receive some great gifts for your donation. Check them out!

Peace, Love, and a million successes to us!

Blake

Technorati Tags: appreciation, coaching, fund raising, goals, gratitude, love, personal power, positive thinking, success, teaching

Brian Mattocks over at Rent-A-Smart-Guy has a great post on setting real, achievable goals. There are several variations of the S-M-A-R-T acronym, but this is the original. Read on!

“Many people use goals to drive to a more ideal future. Some goals can’t easily be achieved because they don’t seem to convert well into the SMART (Specific, Measureable, Achieveable, Realistic, Time-Bound) goals criteria. Desires like new skills, future beliefs, or perspectives are often very difficult to get to a level of specificity or measurability. Don’t fret. There is a simple question based process to get you to some very specific objective goals.

“Objective Goals typically fall into the category of SMART goals. Most objective goals can be specific, measurable, achieveable, reasonable, and time bound. Such goals often relate to objective properties in the real world that you can appreciate with your senses. In many ways, setting these goals are easy – because they make sense. It is also easy to get help with objective goals.

“Subjective desires on the other hand are much more difficult to work with. Subjective desires often relate to feelings or perspectives on a situation or problem. Desires like “I want to get better at handling stress” become much more difficult to work with in SMART terms. Others such as  ”I want to have more self confidence” are just as challenging.

“Fortunately, there is a simple series of questions we can use to turn Subjective desire statements into Objective goal statements and make them easier to work with. Here they are:

1. What would different if you achieved your goal? This is a good question because it helps you get to specific behaviors and circumstances you can work on or create. Each of these statements of difference help to describe a potential objective goal or action step.
2. What am I doing now that I should start/stop/continue doing to help achieve my desire?
   In the same way, this question can help you get to specific actions or behaviors that you can change to achieve your desire. Each of these start/stop/continue items may be made an objective goal very easily. For example if you want to stop thinking judgmental thoughts, simply start counting them. Such a goal might be worded “I want to think 15 less negative thoughts a week by the end of the quarter.”
3. What is the emotion/need behind the visible desire?
   Often times, what we think we want is a “desire symptom” of a deeper emotional need, or desire. For example, many people want to lose weight in order to feel more attractive and be more confident with themselves. Others want to lose weight for the more “objective” reasons of health.

“Asking these three questions should get you from a squishy desire into a much harder objective goal. If not, keep asking them. Eventually such questions will drive into an objective statement that you can work with.  This is the key to taking a desire out of the realm of inaction and fantasy and bringing it into a place where you can work to make it happen.”

Rent-A-Smart-Guy is a great resource for getting all your questions answered. They cover topics on business, motivation, sales, networking, IT, engineering, and more. Check Brian and the team out! www.RentaSmartGuy.com

Technorati Tags: desire, goals, lesson, motivation, smart, success, wisdom

Free Coaching Session!

With 2010 coming to the half-way point in the next couple of weeks, are you happy with where your year has taken you?  Are there things you’d love to change, improve, increase, or achieve?  Maybe you would only like a little clarity about where you are and where you feel you’re headed on this crazy winding road.  Have you had a day where you left your office for some lunch and thought, “what am I doing?” or “is this really all there is?” or even “man, it would be so incredible if I could only (fill-in the blank)”?

Coaching is such a powerful place to turn to when you’re looking for some insight and fulfillment in your life.  Maybe you’ve looked into getting a coach, but you doubted your ability to afford it…

GREAT NEWS!

We’re giving away 30 minute coaching sessions!  No, really, we are!  F-R-E-E !

Not only are we giving away the first 30 minute session, we’ve discounted our fees to help get you closer to your dream without taking away your savings!  Head to the contact page and send us a message to set-up a free coaching call (or face-to-face meeting), and take us for a test drive!  If you feel like you could benefit from having your own incredible coach, we are offering 30 minute sessions for $25 each for the first 90 days!  Imagine as much as 12 complete weeks of personalized attention, focus, and support to help you discover your best self and show you how to create S-M-A-R-T action plans to get you moving forward.

FOR PEANUTS!

For those of you thinking, “C’mon, there’s no such thing as a free lunch,” truly, there’s no risk. No contracts, no gimmicks, no strings, nothing. The time is yours,and the decision after your session is yours. No hard sell. No fine print. NONE.

Head over to the assessment page and see what you, personally, come up with. They’re free too. If you find some area of your life you might like to improve, we would be more than happy to give you the free session to touch on it. Call 847-754-9615 or send a message our way to set-up your FREE session today! 

As a bonus for signing up for your free session, we’ll send you the Applied Happiness Inspired Action Workbook at no charge! This 30 page workbook will help you get a head start on what motivates you, and what might be holding you back from getting what you want.  This is $10 value, absolutely free.

Don’t wait! This offer only runs through August!

Call or write us today, and discover what a coach can add to your life!

Audentes Fortuna Iuvat – Fortune Favors the Bold.

- The Applied Happiness Team

Technorati Tags: appreciation, attitude, awareness, being bold, clearing, coaching, gratitude, happiness, lessons, love, personal power, positive thinking, success, teaching, wisdom