One Coach

The goal of lifelong learning is one shared by most entrepreneurs, leaders and business owners, and is also an important goal consistently fostered by business coaches. But, in order to instill that love of learning and nurture it into a way of life, a coach must first understand what drives others to learn and want to keep on learning. These motivations are often very different for everyone.

Included here are a few of the main reasons why people strive to learn.

Reward
For some people the goal of learning is a means to an end, in many cases the end being the reward of higher financial status. In some types of organizational structures, your salary increases according to how many courses you have completed, licenses you have attained, or classroom hours you have put in. In these cases the learning that is taking place means the reward of more money.

Natural Characteristics
For the naturally curious, wanting to learn about everything is just as natural as breathing. They have an insatiable curiosity about the world around them that has been with them as long as they can remember. Whether this personality trait is a result of nature or nurture has long been a debate, but suffice it to say that for some, it’s just how it is.

To Make a Difference
The drive to make some small difference in the world is very strong in some people. Quite often these folks are compelled to keep learning about something in order to be able to keep making that difference. If being able to help accomplish something requires learning new information or skills, they are ready and willing to take on the task.

Future Investment
In some professions, methods and tools change rapidly and people who want to remain in the field have no choice but to keep up with the changes as they are happening. This type of learning is seen as a necessity to remain at a job that they love.

Fear
Although certainly not a desired motivation for learning, fear can sometimes be the driving force behind it. For some who believe that their job is at risk if they don’t take courses, learn new skills or keep up with changes in their field, learning becomes another part of their job, or something they have to do but don’t really want to do.

While these are some of the main reasons why people choose to pursue continuous learning, it is by no means an exhaustive list. There are likely as many reasons for wanting to learn something as there are things to learn. The job of a good business coach is to try and understand what drives a person to learn, so he can better help them turn their quest for knowledge into a positive lifelong activity. What is your motivation for continuing to learn? Share with us by leaving your comments below!

If you liked this article, tell all your friends about it. They’ll thank you for it. If you have a blog or website, you can link to it or even post it to your own site (don’t forget to mention www.onecoach.com as the original source).

When you hear the term “clutter,” you probably think of your overflowing kitchen cabinets or all the junk sitting around in your garage. Clutter in any area of your life is certainly draining and overwhelming – both mentally and physically.

What about the clutter in your business? Is it negatively affecting your productivity and growth? Multiple studies have confirmed that having physical clutter leads to mental restlessness and roadblocks, anxiety, and a lack of focus on personal and professional priorities. This year when you start your spring cleaning, don’t just clean around the clutter in your life – clear it out!

These tips will help you get started clearing out the clutter in your business, your home, and anywhere else that you may have accumulated it.

1. Schedule time to focus on clearing clutter, and establish time goals, not just task goals. For example, if you decide to clean out your file cabinets on Tuesday morning but it’s really an all-day job, you’re only setting yourself up for failure. Instead, set a goal to work on the file cabinets from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. and get as much as possible done in that time. That way, once the time is up, you’ll have met your goal even if the task itself is not entirely completed. If you finish that project before your time goal is up, you can start another! If you set time aside each day to work on your projects, you’ll have everything cleared out before you know it!
2. Make a decision. Pick up each item and decide if it is something you need to keep. If the answer is “yes,” put it immediately in its permanent place. You may also find that you need a pile for items you plan to keep but you don’t currently have a “home” for. You can find a place for these items once you’ve cleared out some space.
3. Divide and conquer. If you decide it isn’t something you need to keep, place it into one of four discard piles.
   Trash – Hopefully this will become the largest pile!
   Donations – If an item is still usable, you may want to consider donating it to charity. An added perk of clearing out your clutter is that the donations you make are tax deductible. Plus, you’re helping others that are less fortunate, and you’re “going green” by recycling your unwanted items.
   For sale – Anything you might want to sell at consignment – or even in an online auction like Ebay or Craigslist.
   Decide later – Things you cannot decide whether to toss or keep – this pile should be small, as you don’t want to simply move your clutter around!
4. Time to get rid of the discard piles.
   Trash – Immediately take these items out to the garbage.
   Donations – Call your favorite charity and make an appointment for a pickup, or set aside a time to deliver the items You may want to make this trip once you’ve finished cleaning out several areas.
   For sale – As soon as you are able, list your stuff on the online auction site, place an ad in the local newspaper, or take your stuff to a consignment shop.
   Decide later – Look back through this pile and try to divide as much of it as possible. If you still can’t decide on any items, place them in a box somewhere out of the way. One month later, if you haven’t needed any of the items in this box, you probably don’t need it!
5. Once you’ve gotten rid of all the excess items, it’s time to think about organization and storage. It doesn’t make any sense to go out and buy more storage containers before you’ve de-cluttered. Once all the clutter has been removed, you’ll have a much better idea of what storage and organization items you need – so now it’s time to go get them!
6. It’ll get worse before it gets better. When you start to clean out a drawer or a pile of papers and you begin to divide the items, things will become more spread out and appear to be worse than when you started. Don’t mistake this temporary mess for a lack of progress… just keep going until you’ve gone through it all and made decisions about what to keep and where to keep it. It will be much better once you’re done!
7. If you’re having a hard time getting motivated, reward yourself for your accomplishments. Once you’ve cleaned out every drawer in your desk, go get that massage you’ve been putting off. Plan in advance the treats you will earn as you reach your clutter-clearing milestones. This will help you stay motivated to stick with the process until it is done. Just remember – don’t add to the original problem by choosing rewards that create more clutter!

Complete clutter clearing is not usually an overnight process – it takes time and focus, but it is well worth it! Once you’ve cleared the physical clutter in your life, you’ll release a great deal of mental clutter along with it.

Have electronic clutter to deal with, as well? We’ll be sharing some tips on clearing that out very soon!

Do you have some great clutter clearing tips of your own? We want to hear them! Also, once you start this process, let us know how it’s going! Leave your comments below!

I love the Olympics for many reasons. The sheer fun, joy and spirit we get to participate in while watching the athletes, their stories, their families, and the highs and lows – it all makes for a great way to invest time in observing others pursue their dreams partly for their country, partly for themselves.

I can’t help but ask myself what these athletes did to prepare for the Olympics. What physical workouts, diets, practice and dreaming did they do? What doubts, fears anxieties, lack of confidence, certainties and feelings did they experience on their journey to Vancouver? Mostly, what did they do to overcome these feelings that each one of us has at one time or another in pursuit of our goals and dreams?

The Olympics, I believe, gives us a chance to live vicariously through the participants, be it athlete or coach, spectator or staff member. In asking myself these questions and watching the games, I realized that I want to be on the field playing my heart out regardless of whether I win or lose. What about you? Do you want to be playing or watching? Cheering or checking?  Feeling the exhilaration of the game on the track or from the stands?

Either way, business is a game that you can either play or watch, enjoy or not. It’s your choice. Either way, the game is very short when you are playing full out or very long when all you do is find what’s wrong with it.

As I observed the games, I felt a sense of pride and joy and a sense of sadness. In every sporting event someone won the gold, silver or bronze. Many of the athletes didn’t win a medal. Were they losers?  I prefer to think of all of them as winners, just in varying degrees based on their own set of circumstances.

If they showed up, did their best and felt and knew that they did…isn’t that a win? I say yes!

Life is not about winning medals. Life is about showing up ready to play full out and doing the best YOU can do. Competition helps each of us see what is possible by pushing or pulling us to meet our potential and our goals.

Every one of the athletes came to the Olympic Games with a goal. A goal that they committed to, trained for physically and mentally and then went after with all their heart.

What are your business and personal goals? Have you committed to them and are you playing full out? Like the Olympic Games, your flame will burn out. My hope and wish for you is that you have no more game left in you because you left it all on the field, doing and knowing you did your very best!

We’ve just added fresh content to our Business Momentum Club and it’s now better than ever! This upgraded version is based on valuable feedback from small business owners such as yourself. We have a proven system that will lead your business on a path to success. There is no fluff or theory…just relevant and applicable strategies that many small business owners are using right now to take their businesses to the next level.

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I recently recorded this video about The Power of Setting Goals for people interested in achieving the life of their dreams. I wanted to share this with you since being able to set and achieve goals is such an important part of running a business as well.

If you watch this and want to know more about how to achieve all your business goals, then I recommend you sign up for a complimentary business assessment with one of our certified OneCoach advisors. During this one-on-one session, they will guide you on how you can take your business from where you are to where you want to be.

Enjoy and feel free to share this with others! To sign up for that complimentary business assessment, go to www.OneCoach.com/grow.

John Assaraf

I wanted to share with you 5 basic steps on how to customize your own Neural Reconditioning Process™, which I go more in depth about in our business-growth videos that we are offering for FREE here.

Through affirmations and repetition, you can reinforce new beliefs that will get you to think differently and behave differently. If done correctly, you can set up the right mindset to achieve goals that you’ve always dreamed of. Here are the basics of the process:

1. Proper Affirmations: Focus on the goals you want to achieve as if you have already achieved them. (I elaborate more on this subject in one of the free videos.) Focus on affirmations like “I am a successful business owner.”

2. Visualization: Play a mental movie of yourself in the place that you want to be. Be exact – how much revenue you are making, how many clients you have, what they are saying about you, your lifestyle – make yourself FEEL as though it is already happening.

3. Meditation: This isn’t just some “Eastern Art”. Meditation puts your brain in a frequency that will help you reform your beliefs. Hundreds of OneCoach members have attested that meditation has helped them create success in their businesses and made what was once impossible, easy.

4. Auditory Program: You can download music that helps get your brain in the frequency to meditate, or even record your own affirmations to listen to as you meditate.

5. Vision Board: Create a visual representation for your business – whether it is the type of office you want to work in, the things in your office, or your number of clients. Make sure you have something to look at to help re-affirm your new beliefs.

Use a little bit of these steps or a lot of it. I recommend at least 7 minutes a day. If your success isn’t worth 7 minutes a day, then I can’t help you… so set aside the time, and do it!

Do you ever return to your business after reading a book, listening to a CD, or attending a seminar, pumped up full with fresh information, only to never apply it?

That’s because the part of your brain that GATHERS information is different from the part that APPLIES new knowledge.

Your conscious mind is responsible for choose what you want. Your subconscious mind is responsible for your perceptions and behavior. You must train your subconscious to think and behave differently and to work toward what you want.

Here are three things you can do to start reconditioning your subconscious:

1. Take action every morning. Start your day with affirmations about where you want your business to be. Meditate on your visions and goals for your business and life.

2. Focus on what you’re grateful for. By combining your feelings of gratitude along with affirmations in the morning, your brain will release chemicals which will begin to retrain your subconscious mind to think differently.

3. Emotionalize your success. Act as if you are already at the level of success that you want to achieve. By putting yourself in those shoes, you will think and behave differently… which will lead to changes in your behavior… and more importantly… lead to action.

These are just the beginning steps to change from the inside out in order for your business world to change. In video three of the business strategies OneCoach is giving away, I go more in depth about retraining your subconscious to create success. Check out the videos here.

Remember, it is a process to stop letting outside circumstances or previous beliefs control the direction of your life. By unleashing the power of your subconscious mind, you can keep challenging yourself to higher and higher levels of success.

Are you happy with the results in your business?

You may or may not know it, but there is a natural order to the universe that affects you and your business every single day. These natural laws are always working, whether we’re aware of it or not.

One of these laws is called the Law of Cause and Effect. For every effect or result, there must be a cause. If we look at the results in your business, we can see exactly what you have been thinking, what you have been feeling, and what you have been doing.

Your thoughts, feelings and actions directly affect the results you want. It is important to be aware of your thoughts, feelings and actions and to take control of them so that the natural laws of the universe work to your benefit.

Set your goals, then work backwards to figure out what you should be thinking, feeling and doing in order to get the results you want.

I recently recorded a video where I share more about the laws of the universe and how to get them to work for you and your business. You can get this video and six additional business-growth strategies for free right here.

The first question to ask yourself is, Do I feel that I deserve to earn a lot of money? I can honestly tell you that the people I know who make a lot of money absolutely, unequivocally, without a doubt feel that they deserve it.

If you don’t believe you deserve to earn money, you must raise what I call your deserving level and lower your excuses level. By “excuses level,” I mean all your excuses about why you can’t earn money or haven’t earned money. It’s time to stop telling yourself that you aren’t smart enough or good enough or that you don’t know enough and you start putting a value on yourself. If you don’t value yourself, money will never, ever be attracted to you. You will repel it as fast as you can imagine it, and others will not value you, either.

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This article is based on a OneCoach Expert Interview with Willie Jolley. OneCoach Business Growth Network™ members can access the full transcript and recording of the interview on OneMarketplace™.

If you stood in a room with 500 business owners and asked that anyone who has had setbacks to raise their hands, you would likely see 500 hands raised. Everyone has experienced and can relate to a plan gone wrong, a dream unrealized, a vision that met a roadblock. Yet if you went back and asked those same people how they handled those setbacks, you would get a multitude of answers.

A setback is not a cue to stop moving forward. Setbacks allow you to review your plan, make the necessary revisions and continue moving forward. Some setbacks are minor: a seminar that did not draw the anticipated attendees, or a glitch in a marketing plan. Other setbacks may require a shift in a completely new direction, such as the loss of a job, or the loss of your company. Here are his tips for turning setbacks into a setup for a comeback:

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