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

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

Daniel Pink is one of the greatest speakers on motivation on Earth. It’s not so much about getting people motivated, as it is about the science of human potential and what motivates us to tap into that. We’ve all worked a job we didn’t like in some form or another, and I’m willing to bet one of the attributes we didn’t like was the incentive structure. This is a phenomenal talk on motivation in the corporate environment – why traditional incentive structures don’t work. It’s animated so enjoy, learn, and get motivated!

Technorati Tags: Autonomy, awareness, being bold, Daniel Pink, inspiration, motivation, personal power, Purpose, teaching, video, wisdom

It’s official: We’re taking this show on the road! Starting October 28th, we’ll begin holding two-hour workshops in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago. This two-hour evening workshop is about defining what you truly want in life, discovering what it’s going to take to get there – including how to tear down that wall so many of us encounter along the way.

Head over to our EVENTS page to get all the details, and to register! The thumbnails on the bottom of the events page will also provide more details about the class, and my personal bio (so you know what you’re in for) – just kidding! This autumn is going to be very exciting, and it’s only the beginning of a whole new phase for Applied Happiness Coaching.

Hope to see you there!

Blake

Technorati Tags: autumn, awareness, clearing doubt, coaching, goals, lesson, motivation, overcoming obstacles, personal power, teaching, workshop

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

Jay Shafer decided one day to remove the clutter from his world and start over.  He designed and built an 89 square foot home, and began living there. Leaving the ‘everything big’ lifestyle behind him, his life transformed. I love this story. It reminds me how frivolous some of our attachment to material goods can be. Does anyone really need a 20,000 square foot mansion? Maybe they do. I don’t know anyone with one, so I can’t just come out and ask. I’ll update this post if I ever find that answer.

This begs the question of what do we really need in our lives to be happy. It’s not so much about becoming a minimalist and throwing out everything but toilet paper and three outfits – that’s a little too frightening for most of us. Instead, it’s about removing the “noise” and “stuff” with which we all seem to fill our lives. It’s about pulling away from owning things just to own things.

Personally, I remember being younger and spending money on a whole bunch of things I found cool. Now I can’t remember a single thing I got that was important. And I certainly don’t have any of this cool “stuff” to show nowadays. Why did it all disappear? Was it not too expensive and therefore disposable? Was it simply misplaced? Stolen? What happened to all my cool stuff?!?!

It wasn’t truly important to me, so it didn’t stick around. Because it truly wasn’t that important, I didn’t miss it, and I didn’t replace it. Imagine all the things in your life you could sell off, throw out, or donate – stuff you really don’t need, won’t miss, and won’t replace if gone one day. The minimalist credo is similar to “waste not, want not” and is a great place to start.

This becomes MUCH easier after a values exercise. You get a solid sense of your values, what motivates you, and what you need to move forward. You can then ask what this “thing” brings you that you cannot be without. If it doesn’t fill that space inside you, it really doesn’t have to fill that space in your house.

Try your own version of living little. See how it goes, and let us know!

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

Blake

Technorati Tags: appreciation, attitude, clearing, goals, inspiration, lesson, personal power, reflection, teaching, wisdom

I write over at Rent a Smart Guy as well, and this is an article that another contributor, Brian Mattocks, wrote over there that I think goes well with the most recent post here. Definitely head over there and read what we can do for you!

Wisdom is a business worth billions of dollars a year. Many companies, individuals, and social organizations claim to understand it enough to teach it – but few of them bother building the business case for wisdom. Why? Fundamentally, it is because the very notion of wisdom is difficult to understand. What is it, really?

Wisdom in a Nutshell

When I was young, upon coming to a door that was stuck closed, I would attempt brute force to open it. After a few minutes of thrashing and pulling and sweat inducing effort I would give up on that method. Then I would analyze the door and see if I could understand where and how it was stuck. Only after trying to understand the problem could I then devise an approach to open it. Thirty seconds of looking at the problem and 2 seconds of finesse resulted in an open door.

Wisdom is a form of knowledge – but processed in a special way. Wisdom is the applied understanding that comes from knowledge. When looking for wisdom in an employee, they call it experience, insight, expertise, savvy, or know-how.

The definition provided above explains the key problem with businesses and institutions that focus on providing wisdom. Such businesses like self-help publications and seminars; and social constructs like religious institutions; can’t directly teach wisdom. They can only teach around it, because wisdom emerges from the experience of an individual.

The benefit of wisdom is in the outcomes it creates. Wisdom cultivates enduring, positive outcome generating environments. Beyond the single result – when applied, wisdom lays the foundation for more results, or paves the way for more wisdom. An added benefit of wisdom is that it often provides business value along more traditional dimensions like: quality, speed, or cost.

A wisdom based approach to problem solving, for example, looks for “everybody wins” scenarios. A wisdom based approach to patient care is comprehensive. A wisdom based approach to sales focuses on relationships. Each of these approaches build better outcomes than “me first”, “symptom management”, “close the sale” approaches.

There are a few ways to acquire wisdom in a more direct fashion. First, cultivate relationships with those who provide honest and meaningful feedback on your behavior. Second, put yourself in situations that you have not experienced before. Third, cultivate mindfulness. While these aren’t the only ways, they are the clearest path to acquiring wisdom.

However you may acquire it, it is clear that wisdom is a good investment.

Brian Mattocks – Rent a Smart Guy – www.rentasmartguy.com

Technorati Tags: business, coaching, employee relations, investment, lessons, teaching, wisdom

“Once an old woman came to Buddha and asked him how to meditate. He told her to remain aware of every movement of her hands as she drew the water from the well, knowing that if she did, she would soon find herself in that state of alert and spacious calm that is meditation.”

“Water, if you don’t stir it, will become clear; the mind left unaltered will find its own natural peace.”

Sometimes we get so caught up in the rattle of everyday life that an overwhelming blindness washes over us. We’re blind to the true nature of the world around us, our place in it, and what we really want for ourselves. We are so in tune with the ‘noise’ that the voice inside becomes inaudible, and we often end up somewhere we don’t feel we belong. Some of us lose our way from time to time, right?

Stillness is such a powerful tool for reconnecting to that little voice. When the mind tunes out the noise, and instead, listens to the calm repetition of breathing, the soul can often take the moment and speak up – often with such clarity. Mindfulness meditation is an easy way to reach this stillness. I personally use an activity (one in which I can focus, and be on autopilot) as a catalyst to stillness. I wash and wax my car to ‘tune out’ the noise.

The calm I get in slowly covering the car in soap and rinsing her clean is immense. I’ve done this a few hundred times, so it’s nothing I really need to concentrate on, but I couldn’t have a conversation while doing it either – and why would I want to?!? I let my mind slowly shut off by focusing on the movement of my hands across the paint, and the shine that I reveal. Before long, I can hear my heart telling me how satisfying this activity is, and what parts of my life it also feels satisfied. I get a chance to really reflect without the rattle of my mind coming into play. This stillness of my mind is priceless.

In the Karate Kid movies, Mr. Miyagi puts Daniel(son) to work by having him wax the car and paint the fence. This not only teaches him Kata Karate movements, but it introduces him to stillness and mindful meditation. It’s often in the stillness that we come to great realizations. It’s almost cliche now, but how many times have you fallen in love with someone in the stillness between the two of you? Think about it!

The homework this time is to practice stillness, my friends. If you know how to meditate, please do that and listen to what your mind and body say when you tune the ‘noise’ out. If you do not know how to meditate, try to simply sit quietly with your eyes closed and concentrate on your breathing only. Concentrate on breathing slowly in your nose, and out your mouth. Soon enough your mind will unravel from its grip on the rattle, and you’ll find peace. That’s where you’ll also hear that inner voice speak to you. It’s incredible what he/she has to say sometimes.

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

Blake

Technorati Tags: appreciation, attitude, awareness, Buddha, gratitude, happiness, lesson, love, peace, stillness, teaching, 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