The Tak Team Blog

When things go wrong as they sometimes will
When the road you’re traveling seems all uphill
When the funds are low and the debts are high
And you want to smile but you have to sigh
When care is pressing you down a bit
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit

Life is queer with its twists and turns
As every one of us sometimes learns
And many a fellow turns about
When he might have won had he stuck it out
Don’t give up though the pace seems slow
You may succeed with another blow

Often the goal is nearer than
It seems to a faint and faltering man
Often the struggler has given up,
When he might have captured the victor’s cup
And he learned too late when the night came down
How close he was to the golden crown

Success is failure turned inside out
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt
And you never can tell how close you are
It may be near when it seems far;
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit
It’s when things go wrong that you mustn’t quit
-Author Unknown

I was in the ninth grade when I first heard those words. My friend Wally Small recited them in front of the class and they had an immediate impact on me. That was the year I started running track and during practice, as I struggled through the last two hundred meters of my intervals, under the bright afternoon sun, dust swirling from the occasional light breeze traversing the field, my muscles aching from the lactic acid build up, my lungs bursting as I gasped for breath; I would repeat to myself the only words I remembered from that poem….”Give it your hardest hit but never quit.” If we ever hope to realize our dreams and truly reap the fruits of our labor, we must develop the ability to endure in the face of the challenges and adversity that life will throw our way.

Persistence does not recognize failure

Lack of persistence is one of the biggest reasons for failure. People simply give up and, in the history of the world, no one has ever been defeated until defeat was accepted as reality. As Winston Churchill said in a speech at his Alma Mater, “Never give in; never give in, never, never, never, never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.” Unfortunately, most people give in even before they get started. They will come up with a great idea but right away think of all the reasons why it wouldn’t work - and quit.

No matter what your field of endeavor, you will always face obstacles. Things simply won’t go as well as planned or expected. But if you don’t quit, you may achieve your goals. Back in 1988 when our team got started we were sure that corporate sponsors would be knocking down the door to back this hot new idea. Very quickly, however, it became apparent that that wasn’t going to happen. So we began selling T-shirts. You may remember them. They declared us “The hottest thing on ice!!” There were many nights that I pulled up beside a couple on the dance floor, whipping out a shirt and completing the transaction before the song was over.

Even more recently, as I prepared to compete in the 1998 Winter Olympic Games in Nagano, Japan, I was faced with the old age problem of funding. It was January 1997 and I can still hear my coach’s voice saying “Devon, if you don’t get sponsorship by June, you will only be chasing pipe dreams and you should quit. Well, instead of quitting I set up training camp in Evanston, Wyoming (www.evanstowy.org) and started to coach myself. I delivered pizza at night after about eight hours of training during the day. I was experiencing major setbacks but I had found a way to keep the dream alive. June came and there was no sponsorship. July, August, September, October, November, and December came, and there was still no sponsorship. It wasn’t until January, one month before the Olympics, that the Utah based long distance company, Tel America (www.telamerica.com)came on board and provided the financial support that I needed. It all happened because I didn’t quit.

Persistence denotes belief in yourself

Persistence is a very good measure of your belief in yourself. It speaks volumes of how confident you are in your ability to succeed. Only a person who is confident in their ability to succeed will persist. The more you persist, the more your confidence and your belief in yourself intensifies. That in turn increases your desire and motivation, and drives you to persist even more - which reinforces your self-esteem and belief in yourself. It is an upward spiral.

Persistence builds on itself

Persistence is the ability to endure in the face of adversity. Every single act of persistence builds and cultivates success habits which become ingrained and ultimately guarantee your success. Each act of persistence strengthens you and increases your ability to persist even more; until you become the most persistent, determined person you know. You will simply become unstoppable. As they say “The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in not giving up.”

Keep on Pushing!

Copyright (C) 2004 Devon Harris.
All rights reserved worldwide.
www.devonharrislive.com

The contents of this E-zine may be copied, reproduced, or freely distributed for all nonprofit purposes without the consent of the author as long as the author’s name, copyright notice and contact information are included.

Devon Harris Bio

• Born Christmas Day, 1964
• Raised in Kingston, Jamaica
• Graduated from the prestigious Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, in England
• Served as an officer in the Jamaica Defense Force
• Selected to membership on Jamaica’s first Olympic Bobsled Team
• Competed in the 1988 Winter Olympics - Calgary, Canada
• 1992 Winter Olympics - Albertville, France
• 1998 Winter Olympics - Nagano, Japan
• Disney based the popular movie, Cool Runnings, on the story of the 1988 Bobsled Team

Presently, Devon is an athlete ambassador for Olympic Aid, an athlete-driven humanitarian non-profit organization using sport and play to enhance child development and build community capacity. He resides in New York City and travels the world as a motivational speaker, offering a captivating message of inspiration and hope. His personal philosophy, like that of the Jamaican Bobsled Team, is that he will not permit others to define the limits of his success.

A personal life coach is part of a profession whose name is new but whose role is as old as recorded history. Throughout history, successful people have had the self-awareness and emotional intelligence to ally themselves with friends and confidants, advisors and partners, mentors and guides, peers and supporters of their enterprises, consultants, and, in athletic endeavors, even coaches. The synonyms for those who care for us and are committed to our growth and success are as plentiful as mythology’s hero of a thousand faces.

A COACH IS THE MODERN-DAY ALLY

Since we began to call it “coaching” in the mid-1980s, we now have “coaches,” who differ from the previous archetypal helpers in various ways. Yet those differences are precisely the source of the power and effectiveness that is causing more and more people to hire their own chief of staff.

Clients hire coaches for support and comradeship in reaching goals in areas as diverse as business, executive, leadership, career, financial, health and relationships. Many coaches offer specialties such as spiritual coaching, parenting coaching, and individual speech coaching. The coached client sets better goals, takes more action, makes better decisions, and more fully uses his or her natural strengths.

Coaches enhance the traditional functions of friends, mentors, or advisors by adding several effective features:

- A structured relationship with clear goals

- Advanced techniques and procedures designed to effect change

- Motivated clients who know they want something, even if they’re not yet sure what it is

- A coach skilled in ferreting out a client’s true goals and identifying how the client can most effectively use his or her natural talents to reach them

Sometimes coaches will just help you over that cliff. But only after you’ve told them you’re ready, looked back, and given them the thumbs-up sign.

A COACH IS NOT AN EXPERT IN ALL AREAS

Coaches presume you are the expert on you. Unlike other practices (consulting, some fields of therapy), a coach does not need to be an expert in the field of your goals in order to coach you on the process of achieving those goals - in fact, a generalist can sometimes help you more than any specialist. That’s because coaches are experts in process — in the methodology of asking powerful questions that help you to clarify your values, goals, and what blocks you. And coaches are experts in defining, leading you to, and declaring the attainment (or lack thereof) of outcomes. They don’t need to be experts in subjects like your psychology or even human psychology, though many are. If expertise matters

at all in a given situation, the expertise is yours, the client’s.

COACHES TEND TO BE EMOTIONALLY INTELLIGENT AND GOOD WITH PEOPLE

Beyond commitment, coaches bring critical attitudes and traits: emotional intelligence, ferocious listening skills, proven psychological techniques, people smarts, and, if you hire right, a sense of humor. Coaches perform assessments of skills and aptitudes, of course, but they also draw out what would give you fulfillment. Most importantly for life and career coaching clients, coaches dig into what clients have always (often since childhood) enjoyed, but too often overlooked. This is just one of the ways we whittle away at who you might reflexively think you are in order to expose the real you.

We know how to help you model the attributes of people you consider successful until that modeling manifest as your new reality. We can show you techniques of mental imagery and construction of effective, positive affirmations. We’re alert to linguistic patterns indicating commitment - or the lack of it. We can spot speech patterns that signal avoidance, resignation, defeatism, and unexamined assumptions and obstructions that impede success.

We also work at converting clients’ unconscious negativity and subtle patterns of defeatist thinking into conscious empowerment. We do this using various methods, including some drawn from consulting and psychology. One is Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP), a series of techniques and procedures for coding human behavior in order to assist clients in understanding what they do and how they do it when they do it excellently. Another is cognitive-behavioral therapy. We use framing and metaphors to set up worldviews in speaking to you, and we employ reframing when we see that a worldview (or set of assumptions) expressed by you is restrictive and self-limiting.

We try to apply the best of science and people skills to real caring about how you fare.

• Social Contract. Coaching relies on one of the most powerful forces in the world: the power of the social contract and commitment. For the same reason that public marriage vows tend to keep people together longer than they would in its absence, for the same reason we try harder to keep New Year’s resolutions we have shared with others, coaching is effective because you have made a promise to someone other than yourself - a public or social contract.

• A coach has you as his full-time job. Unlike even a friend, a coach is wholly and formally committed and dedicated to your success, uses rigorous and proven training and techniques to assist you in getting there, and will always (not just most of the time) speak the truth to and challenge you when you could most benefit from it.

• Sometimes we want help but don’t need a therapist: a coach drives a future of high functioning. Unlike a therapist in a strictly counseling format, a coach focuses not on the past but on the future, and supports you not in analyzing dysfunction but in functioning at an even higher level than you already are. For more on this important topic, see our article on “The Difference Coaching and Counseling” at http://www.ferocecoaching.com/coaching-and-counseling.html.

• A coach leads you to answers that are often inside you. Unlike a consultant, who purports to be a subject-matter

expert and creates most of any plan of action, a coach is an expert on, if anything, process and motivation, and simply guides you in the creation of most of your own plan of action. We believe and have seen that people are fundamentally creative and resourceful; our job is to show you how to tap into that creativity and those resources.

We bring to the task the following guiding principles:

• A posture of non-judgmental awareness, or unconditional positive regard, or, more simply, acceptance of you

• Authenticity, and honesty coupled with sensitivity

• Compassion-in-action, and empathy

Cameron Powell, a writer and coach, is also a professional ally and strategic partner who, as a life coach, when his clients most need it, will kick their butts into action now and then. To learn more about how he gets people unstuck and moving forward in their lives and careers as a Personal Life Coach , visit his site.

Before the age of twenty-two I used to think I was one of the
most unluckiest people in the world. My life seemed to be such a
struggle compared to other people who seemingly breezed through
life. I was caught up in a web of negativity and needed someone
or something to help me to escape.

Then I met a man who was around fifty while working on a project
at work. We were having a chat one day when he stated that I was
a depressive person who rarely smiled. What he said was quite
upsetting and disturbing, however would have a profound effect
on my future.

In a shocked state I denied the accusation but be continued, yes
you are, you very rarely smile, you are negative about most
issues and you always seem to be carrying the world on your
shoulders.

This man was aged around fifty three and continued, I used to be
like you and then I was given some advice, of which I am now
going to relay to you. When you feel down, depressed or sorry
for yourself, read the newspapers or watch the news on the
television. You may then realise that you are in fact one of the
lucky ones.

I listened and thought about what he had said. I had never been
a big reader or watcher of the news, but decided to start. The
advice was totally correct, the news from around the world and
even my own country was quite shocking. I realised that the
worries I had were actually quite trivial and that I needed to
cherish everyday and start to look on the bright side of life.

In reality worrying about a particular situation does not help
you, what I now try and do is to find a solution to whatever it
is I am stressing about by thinking positive and taking a
pro-active stance. This is not always easy as the negative
demons in my mind are constantly working to bring me down. I see
it as a battle and the demons as a bully and am determined not
to let them win.

Stephen Hill

A King was trying to choose between three maidens to be his wife and queen. It was very difficult to judge since these women were all very intelligent and beautiful. He gave each maiden a bag of seeds and told them he was going on a pilgrimage for one year. When he returned, each of them were to give the seeds back to him. Whoever protected the seeds the best would become his wife.

The first maiden locked them in a safe to protect them. The second maiden sold the seeds at the market, thinking she would purchase new seeds when the king returned. The third maiden threw the seeds in the garden. When the king returned, the first maiden pulled the seeds from the safe where they had died due to lack of light, water, and air. The second maiden rushed to the market, purchased new seeds, and presented them to the king. The King said that although the seeds were alive, they were not the same seeds. The third maiden brought him into the garden where there were many flowers blooming. She told the King that the flowers were from the seeds he had given her. The king said to the third maiden that she would be his wife because she understood that a seed, like love, should be treated with care, tended with kindness and allowed room to grow for it to become strong and beautiful.

Relationships, like seeds need the proper environment to grow. The environment needs a balance of the five elements. The seed will die if there is too much or too little water, air, light, or earth. Just as a seed needs this balance in life to flourish, we also need proper balance in our homes to create, maintain, and nurture our relationships.

SIX KEYS TO A SUCCESSFUL RELATIONSHIP

1. Clear the energy in your home regularly as a build up of stress and resistance will only inhibit relationships. You can purchase a Vastu CD from Vastu Creations by emailing us at info@vastucreations.com. When played regularly, this CD will eliminate negative energy in the environment and will benefit all of your relationships.

2. Remove clutter from all areas of your home especially the center, northeast, and northwest. Clutter causes stagnation in relationships.

3. Balance the five elements in your home to create a healthy environment so relationships will grow. Get a Vastu Home Analysis. It’s easy to do, easier to implement and will benefit your life immensely. See the Vastu Creations website at www.vastucreations.com for more information and to order.

4. Sleep in the southwest area of your home with your head to the south. Your body is a magnet with your head being the positive polarity. When you sleep with your head to the north, the two positive polarities repel each other and can create disharmony in the body. Sleeping with your head to the south replenishes your energy and helps to remove stress.

5. Create a Relationship Altar to positively stimulate new and existing relationships. You can purchase individual instructions for this altar by going to the Products Page on our website at www.vastucreations.com/ or pre-order our upcoming book Altars of Power and Grace and get free shipping within the continental United States.

6. You are connected to everyone in the world and everything in the Universe. See all people as God. Treat others as you wish to be treated by giving them respect and honoring who they are.

Michael and Robin Mastro’s synergistic approach successfully assists people in living in peace and harmony with themselves and others, and in creating balanced lives filled with unlimited possibilities. Visit us at www.VastuCreations.com

Six months ago you had trouble finding your keys and were late for work. At the time, you felt agitated and upset. Chances are, you don’t even remember the incident. Last year, at a business lunch, you spilled salad dressing on your shirt. You were so embarrassed when it happened but now you can just laugh at the whole episode.

Three years ago, you were on your way to the airport to leave for vacation. You got caught in a traffic jam and missed your plane. You were worried sick that your whole vacation would be ruined. However, when you finally arrived at the airport, the airline was able to get you and your family on a later flight. Your trip was wonderful and the traffic jam is a distant memory.

How often have you looked back on what seemed like misfortune at the time, and wondered how you could have been so aggravated? Has anyone ever said to you, “Remember when you were so upset about…” and you couldn’t recall the incident they were referring to? Did you ever have a fight with someone and later couldn’t remember what the conflict was about?

Undesirable or unpleasant circumstances and events are a part of living. Something breaks, you loose something, you’re late, you embarrass yourself, you forget to do something, someone laughs at you, someone doesn’t like you, you get into an argument, or your car breaks down.

Some circumstances you have control over, others you don’t. Many people constantly get tripped up by the small annoying aspects of life. They expend far more emotional energy on them then is warranted. As a result, their enthusiasm for good and positive things declines.

Most feelings fade with time. If they don’t disappear altogether, their intensity diminishes. The cliché that hindsight is 20/20 is recalled on a regular basis. So why not look forward with hindsight?

What exactly does this mean? You have already experienced the effect time has on your memory and feelings. In hindsight, you wonder why you were so upset. So view the present as if you were looking back on it from the future.

When faced with a stressful situation ask yourself, “How will I feel about this next week, next month, or next year?” Although your feelings may be very intense at the moment, will they last? Recall how time has soothed past events. Consider the big picture. In the overall scheme of things, will what you are confronting now matter as much in the future?

When faced with feelings of frustration, project yourself into the future. In the future, what you are currently facing is at best a faded memory. Next, reassess the significance of what you are now experiencing and put it into perspective.

Since memories and feelings are going to fade anyway, why not save yourself a lot of time and grief by not getting trapped initially? The main question to ask is “Will this matter to me later?” If the answer is no, why should you let it matter to you now?

That’s how to look forward with hindsight. You view the events of today as if they were already in the past. Emotions diminish and fade with the passage of time and life goes on. Don’t waste time on those things that won’t matter to you later. Spend time on what does matter.

copyright 2005 Bryan Golden

Bryan Golden is a self-development and motivational expert, author, and adjunct professor. He is the author of “Dare to Live Without Limits,” and writes a nationally syndicated newspaper column. For more information please visit:
http://www.daretolivewithoutlimits.com or
http://www.bryangolden.com

We all have our own unique constructs and beliefs and opinions about laughter and play and fun and joy and happiness. In this article, I combine play and fun as one pair and joy and happiness as another to capture nuances that single words would not.

Laughter

I love to laugh — those of you who know me personally already know that. I remember twenty or so years ago when first studying key contributors to the field of stress management, I was so pleased to learn that one good belly laugh each day does wonders for us all.

Physiologically, laughter introduces oxygen into the body in a way that few other actions can. Laughter also exercises inner muscles that are otherwise hard to exercise. Healing on the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual levels are often attributed to the act of laughing.

For laughter to be effective, the content or stimulus is irrelevant. Dr. Norman Cousins used Candid Camera television shows and Marx Brothers movies to stimulate laughter that promoted self-healing which he wrote about in his ground-breaking publications.

I have friends I laugh with about things that are not funny to anyone but us. We laugh with tee-hees and guffaws and belly laughs. It’s deeply healing. It’s fun. We do not need a reason — we just use and appreciate the synergy of each other.

I have another friend, a health care practitioner, who has suggested that I gather a group of laughers together and make an audio tape. No content to try to get someone to laugh. Just laughing to laugh and to laugh more. He guarantees I will sell many of these tapes because the laughter will inspire others to laugh.

If we all set out to try to agree about what is funny, we would probably argue ourselves out of laughing. “Star Trek: The Next Generation” fans know Data’s difficulty with grasping what is funny to humans. My point is that it is not necessary for anything “to be funny” in order to laugh or to benefit from laughter.

Play and Fun

Placing these two words together usually generates a feeling of spontaneity that is not easy to define using a single word. Many of us “play” at our work. I once heard James Galway, one of the world’s greatest flutists, say that he has never worked a day in his life. Fun for you may feel like a chore for me and vice versa. We know instinctively if it is play or fun by how we feel — light and free and happy, for example.

Joy and Happiness

Some people like to make a distinction between joy and happiness. Defining these words differently is quite acceptable, but it is a feeling that I want to identify, so I define them interchangeably.

Joy or happiness is an energy or a feeling that transcends activities. If we are in a state of joy or happiness, we are in a state of mind and feeling that is not dependent on what we are doing, where we are, or who we are with. No matter what we do or have or do not do or do not have, if we are in a state of joy or happiness, we feel and emit a wonderful feeling that further attracts more joy and happiness. Joy and happiness come from inside us and burst from us — perhaps as a hot fire, perhaps as a warm glow. No matter how this energy may be emitted, it is more than a facade, more than a smile. It is life-giving.

Finding Our Own

Part of the fun of the human journey is finding those who resonate to a similar vibration as ours. Laughter has an undeniable vibration — and we tend to know the difference between a jeering laugh and a joyous one. I find that people often describe themselves has having a “good sense of humor.” In fact, I now find that to be such a common self-acclaimed attribute that it is meaningless. I think the discerning quality when looking for similar others is whether or not we laugh or smile at similar things.

As adults, we seek out activities and persons with similar vibrations. Sometimes for our education we may seek out very different types, often returning to “our own.” By “our own” I want to be clear that I am not referring to same skin-colored persons staying together or all Germans staying in Germany. I mean “like” below the obvious exterior, “like” spiritually, “like” vibrationally.

The Path of Joy and Happiness

We do not create joy by poking fun at or ridiculing someone or by being poked. We may learn by the “poking” that we do not want to experience more of that and learn to protect ourselves from being poked. But let us not delude ourselves into believing that poking is joy. If someone is hurt by a sharp barb, it is an act of unhappiness.

Laughter is an energy that can propel us along the Path of Joy. Joyful laughter helps to lighten the load. This is a time to lighten up with many paths and techniques and modalities. Laughter is one that is always available.

Copyright © 2005 Marshall House. All rights reserved. You may save this article, send it to a friend, or reprint it in your online publications, provided the article remains complete and this information is attached. Voice of Jeanie Marshall http://www.jmvoice.com and JMviews Empowerment http://www.jmviews.com