Supercoach - Michael Neill [14]
• “I often stress myself out when I think about managing my money.”
• “I often terrify myself by thinking about losing what I have and projecting into the future.”
This then gave us our new goals for him to work on in our coaching:
1. To experience more ease and well-being in his work
2. To experience happiness and well-being while managing his money
3. To motivate himself to make smart financial decisions by inspiring himself instead of terrifying himself
4. To experience himself as the owner of his life and creator of his experience, capable of creating pleasure, satisfaction, and meaning in everything he did
Not only was he able to transform his experience around money over the course of the first few months, but within a year he was making more, worrying less, and in his words, “creating a wonderful experience of being alive.”
Whose Life Is It Anyway?
1. Write a paragraph or two about a situation or area of your life where you would like things to be different. For example:
“My relationship is just awful. I thought I’d found myself a great guy, but I obviously got that one wrong—he’s obsessive and moody and impossible to spend time around.”
2. Go back through what you’ve written and circle any phrases where you’ve attributed qualities of being (stress, ease, difficulty, fear, and so on) to other people or external events.
3. Rewrite your story as if those qualities are things you bring to your experience, not ones that you get from it. If you like, take into account that most experiences are temporary and changeable. For example:
“I’m really not enjoying my relationship with Tony at the moment. I like a lot of things about him, but I find it difficult to cope when he seems to be up in his head instead of fully present with me.”
4. Just for fun, rewrite your story as if you were truly the creator of your experience. What would be your goals/intentions for creating more of what you wanted? For example:
“Whenever I see Tony frowning or ask him a question and only get a grunt in response, I go up into my head and create nightmare scenarios of how awful this will be in 20 years’ time. I make myself really sad and angry, hoping that if I can just get angry enough, I’ll find the courage to either talk to him about it or move on with my life. . . . What I really want is to feel happy inside myself regardless of what’s going on with Tony, and to be there for him if he wants me to be. If he really doesn’t want to change, I want to feel ready and able to move on.”
In a nutshell:
• The world is what you think it is.
• You’ll always tend to see whatever it is you’re looking for.
• You’re creating your experience of life right now, moment by moment.
If you like, you can take some time to just live with what we’ve been discussing before moving on. Reread it as often as you like, play with it, do the exercises, and give yourself some space to notice the changes that will begin to happen “all by themselves.” No rush—you’ve got all the time in the world!
Have fun, learn heaps, and when you’re ready, I’ll join you in the next session. . . .
SESSION TWO
You Were Born Happy
“The fact that millions of people share the same forms of
mental pathology does not make these people sane.”
— Erich Fromm
An Old Sioux Legend
In ancient times, the Creator wanted to hide something from the humans until they were ready to see it. He gathered all the other creatures of creation to ask for their advice.
The eagle said, “Give it to me and I will take it to the highest mountain in all the land,” but the Creator said, “No, one day they will conquer the mountain and find it.”
The salmon said, “Leave it with me and I will hide it at the very bottom of the ocean,” but the Creator said, “No, for humans are explorers at heart, and one day they will go there, too.”
The buffalo said, “I will take it and bury it in the very heart of the great plains,” but the Creator said, “No, for one day even the skin of the earth will be ripped