CompassCast™

Build Trusting Relationships and Accomplish More!

The coaching-focused Mastermind Group in the Upper Valley of Vermont / New Hampshire will begin a new text on September 7th, 2010 that will help you expand your network, gain support and reach your goals.

The group, in collaboration with Borders Books, meets each Tuesday at 10:00 am in West Lebanon, NH. The new text, "Who's Got Your Back", by Keith Ferrazzi, provides an executable strategy for your most important plans without costing your sanity.

Many of us are caught up in the day-to-day struggle between work and family and fun and wellness. How do you do keeping yourself balanced? How do you keep yourself grounded? How do you keep yourself focused? How do you insure you reach your goals in a focused but mindful way? Ferrazzi's book explains a nine-step approach to building what he calls lifeline relationships.

With "Who's Got Your Back" you will learn to create meaningful and trusting relationships well beyond your success. You will benefit from reading this book regardless of whether you engage the Mastermind Process.

If you are like most people, however, just read books and don't engage them fully. Coaching brings the book to life. Through masterminding this book won't be another piece of information but will become an actionable strategy you can depend on being accountable to.

If you live near the West Lebanon, NH / White River Junction, VT area -- you owe it to yourself to check out the power of Masterminding.

"Who's Got Your Back" shows us that relationships are the key to our success in business. You will learn the kinds of relationships that really make a difference. Ferrazzi also shows us how to get further in setting your goals and staying more powerful in your career.

The Mastermind Group works through each book slowly - one text about every three months - so participants can easily keep up with the reading.

Have you read this book? Do you think it is as impactful as Ferrazzi's last book, "Never Eat Alone" (which we also covered in the Mastermind Group).

For more information about the Mastermind Group, call me at 802-380-1026 or go to http://Mastermind.TrueAzimuth.biz.

8.3%

Think of an area of your life -- time at work, time at school, time talking to your partner about love and future plans, exercise...

Did you know that if you re-claimed 5 minutes that you wasted in 1 hour -- whether it be spinning your wheels, getting organized, finding something, going through piles of papers, not list--what did you say?..

Anyways.

5 minutes better managed each hour means a productivity increase of 8.3% minmum.

Here's the math (its easy) 1 hour divided by 12 = 8.3

Its not BIG steps that we need to take to be more effective in our lives.  Its not BIG steps we need to take to move from good to great.

Its small -- simple -- steps.

What can you do to re-claim 5 minutes from this hour -- right now.  Make this a daily habit you ask your self each day.  You can do it!

©2007 True Azimuth, LLC
Business Coaching, Relationship Coaching, Life Coaching

All or Nothing

When a goal requires doing something on a daily basis, many people face a struggle.

Its not that they are unmotivated to achieve their goal.  Its that they have no strategy for turning a new daily task into an accustomed habit.

There are a number of factors at play here but the biggest is all-or-nothing thinking.  It happens when you set a specific parameter for your habit (for example, "exercise for 30 minutes three times each week", or meditate for 60 minutes every day", or "create a 500-word entry in my on-line coaching blog twice each week").

Parameters are great:  they keep you focused on your task, allow you to measure benchmarks, hold you accountable to expectations you set for yourself.  But they can be sabotaged through all-or-nothing thinking.  Consider the example of exercising for 30 minutes three times each week.  If you find yourself choosing to stay on the coach and not exercise because you can't exercise the full 30 minutes then you may be caught up in all-or-nothing-ness. 

They way to snap out out of it is to ditch the time frame. 

Reframe your plan:  "I will exercise three times each week whether its for 1 minute or 30 minutes."

Once you get into the "habit" then worry about the time frame.

I struggled for years to maintain a daily mediation practice.  I go on a retreat once each year and after each retreat my daily practice would be "strong," sitting each morning and evening. Then it would start to fizzle out and eventually I would start thinking "If I can't do the whole hour, why bother."  I would talk about this with teachers on retreats I sat and got similar advice:  be diligent, be committed, etc.

Then I met Pat Coffey who co-led a Men's Retreat at IMS in Barre Massachusetts.  Pat said, "Don't worry about the time.  Tell yourself each day that you will just assume the position -- even if it means you sit down and then get right back up.  If you sit for 30 seconds that's fine.  If you sit for 30 minutes that's fine.  No expectations.  Just sit and see."

So successful was this advice in my practice that I have integrated into my coaching helping people to find success in everything from exercising to stopping cigarette smoking.  We create this mindset of what success has to be and if what we end up with doesn't match perfectly we want to throw it all away.

We forget how hard change is and we forget to recognize and celebrate the huge success of changing the course of our life -- a life charged with significant powerful momentum -- even one tenth of one degree.  We don't consider the impact of a one tenth of one degree change in course over time:  you will end up hundreds of miles from where you were originally headed.

©2007 True Azimuth, LLC
Business Coaching, Relationship Coaching, Life Coaching