Coaches Corner~Lying

Once again, let's get clear on the fact that I believe that God made us. I believe that everything that we were given, God gave it to us to enhance our life. Everything: even our ability to think, our tendency to create meaning where there's no meaning. I believe that was given to us by God.

In scripture we are told that we are able to call those things that be not as though they were. Let's meditate on that scripture: call those things that be not as though they were. In our world, in my finite world, that amounts to lying. Yes, lying. It is my contention that the Bible tells us to lie. Much of the character traits that we attribute to godliness is the result of our own imagination in many ways. Really? It is the way that we think of things that give them their meaning. You may think that you are lying when you tell someone that you are definitely going to do something, or you may think you are not lying when you tell someone you're definitely going to do something and you don't do it. My assessment is that if you tell me that you are definitely going to do something, that translates to me as you definitely won't do it.

What does all this mean? Recently, I found myself promising a client of mine that I would get something to him by the end of the day. Now if you're in business you know that "By the end of the day" is one of those phrases that really sounds nice. It has a nice ring to it, and I like saying it. "Oh, I'll have that to you by the end of business today." It's one of my favorite things to tell my clients.

Now as for lying, when I don't consciously know that I'm going to do something by the end of the day, then I'm lying, and you are lying too. When you tell me that you are definitely going to do something and it's not clear to you that you are going to do it, you haven't made a decision that you're going to do it, then you too are lying.

Now lying, and that's just our term for it, God probably calls it something else, by any other means, is something that we can use to hurt others, we can use to deceive others. The Bible doesn't teach us to deceive others, but it does teach us to call those things that be not as though they were. Let's just say that you were to use lying for your good and not to deceive others.

One way that lying can be used for your good is that when you have a tendency to think that someone is trying to hurt you, then tell yourself that they're not. Because you can't read somebody's mind. You don't know why they're doing what they're doing. It may hurt you, that is true, but whether or not they are trying to hurt you is something that you have no idea about.

One of my favorite leadership trainers is a lady named Byron Katie. Byron Katie uses four questions to assess any situation that brings you anxiety. The first of these questions is: "Is that true?" The next question is: "How can you know that's true?" If you can't know something is true, it doesn't matter whether you know it's true or not. If you treat it as true, it may as well be true.  The other questions are not relevant to this discussion.

I'm urging you as an extraordinary coach to get present to this tendency to lie and only lie to yourself, and once again, if you don't know something to be true, maybe you're lying to yourself, and maybe you're not. When we speak things in faith, we are lying. When we say things to help ourselves move forward, we are lying. God loves us whether we lie or not. Any meaning that's given to a lie that you tell is a meaning that's created by the person listening. In the business world, many people aspire to be great, many people to make a phenomenal income. They're told to set goals. They're told to set their goals as in the now. For instance, rather than saying "I'm going to make a million dollars this year," you ought to say, "I make a million dollars this year." Now if you don't have a plan in place to make a million dollars really, aren't you lying?

Now this use of the term lying may be extreme, but the point that I want to make is that everything is about you no matter all the platitudes you hear saying it's about someone else. When you lie to yourself, you do it often enough, you will come to believe it. In our society there are many lies that have come to be true in the minds of millions of people simply because they were repeated time and time again. Repeat the lie that you want to be true to yourself over and over and over again and marvel at it when it comes to past.

This whole blog originated when I recently told my client that I was going to tell him about whether or not my software provided him with a membership site, and I would tell him that before the end of the day. I didn't tell him that before the end of the day. In fact, I didn't think about it again until this morning, even though when I said it I meant well. Guard the every word given to others. Be mindful of the fact that others rely heavily on what you say. Say things to yourself before you say it to others just to get used to how it sounds. If you want something to be true then say it's true. Say I have integrity. Say I am faithful. Say I walk in love. Say I'm the healed and not the sick. Say I leave great treasures for my children. Those things may be a lie now, but it's a lie that you want to believe.

Finally, when God says say those things that be not as though they were, that is a lie that you are really, really excited about telling yourself. If this blog has helped you, tell somebody. Until next time, have a good time.

Coaches Corner~Egomaniac

I'm often accused of being an egomaniac. I'm often accused of loving myself too much. People make these assertions based on the words that come out of my mouth and the stories I tell on a consistent basis. I am an extraordinary coach and I know it. You are an extraordinary coach whether you know it or not. You are an extraordinary human being. Coaches are who my market is, so that's why I focus on extraordinary coaches.

I assert that were I to be followed around by somebody and they were taking notes on the things I did and didn't do, they would come to the conclusion that I justifiably love myself. I love myself because not only of what I get, but I love myself because of how I feel when I inspire others. I love myself for the sort of things that I do that I characterize as loving and forgiving.

I just recently did a blog on inspire. On the very day I was driving to the office after I did that blog, I was moved to do this blog. The reason why is that I found an instance to be inspiring. I was driving along a two-lane country-like road. Traffic was minor, slow, which means that I couldn't see anyone behind me for half a mile or a mile or so. Up ahead was a fire truck on the incoming lane from where I was driving. Big fire truck it was, and it was partially blocking the lane.

Ordinary-sized cars were able to drive by, but say a vehicle about the size of the fire engine wouldn't be small enough to get by. Wouldn't you know it, directly behind the fire truck, trying to come towards me, was a huge dump truck. In fact, it could have been one of those cement trucks that mixes cement while they're driving. Back in the day we used to call them ready mix.

Now the car in front of me just drove right on by. I'm about a quarter of a mile or half a mile behind that car. I see all the cars lining up behind the dump truck. Now get a visual of what I'm saying, because the cars behind the dump truck, they would be able to go around the fire truck and go on about their business, but the huge dump truck wasn't able to do so.

I decided that I would stop way behind the line of demarcation, the line where the truck could go around the fire engine and do it safely. I stopped there for a couple seconds. I suppose the guy driving that big old dump truck was kind of astonished because he sat there momentarily and didn't move. Then he realized that there was a good Samaritan and he would be able to circumvent that ... that they were able to get around that day because the sort of traffic jam that they were experiencing, well, maybe what I did was unnecessary. Maybe behind me the road would have been clear for miles and miles, and they could have passed by unobstructed.

You know what? It doesn't matter. What matters is that I created a story. What matters is that I inspired someone. What matters is that people had a great day and I had a part of it. When you examine that behavior and when you examine that activity, it's no wonder that I spend a majority of my life thinking about how great a guy I am.

I don't spend a majority of my time talking about how great a guy I am because others will do that. But thinking of myself as a great guy actually creates situations where I have a chance to be a great guy. Whenever I have a chance to be a great guy, I take it. If this blog has helped you in any way, shape, form, or fashion, I want to encourage you to do yourself a favor and pass this blog on to someone you know who you care about. I end this blog like I end all the rest of them. You have a good time until the next time.

Coaches Corner~Inspire

It is said that our habits define us. It is also said that if you examine a man's habit, you can pretty much predict what his life is about. One habit that I want to talk about today that's peculiarly significant as an extraordinary coach is the habit of inspiring others. Do you inspire others? Are you easily inspired?

These are two critical questions for my blog today because, depending on your answer to both, that says who you are. If you are indeed an extraordinary coach, then it is your habit to inspire others. You want to inspire others to greatness. How, you may ask, do you inspire one to greatness? Well, let's take a look at that.

Greatness, as we all know, is a non-specific characteristics that given to many people. President Barack Obama is great. Martin Luther King is great. Jesus Christ is great. You are great, as am I. What makes these people great, in no small way, is the way that they control their feelings. Imagine this: someone has made you angry and you blow up at them and you tell them exactly how you feel. You do, as we say, give them a peace of your mind.

Ask yourself, who looks at that behavior, who looks at that activity and says to themself, "Oh boy, I would like to be able to do that?" Let's just say you're married and your wife wants to watch  the Bill O'Reilly show, and you want to watch the football game. You bully her, you take the remote from her, and you force her to sit with you and watch the football game whether she wants to or not. Is that inspiring? Is that something that people look at and say, "Oh my goodness, I wish I could do that"?  Inspirational activities are those that impact others to say, "Wow, I wish I could do that!"  "That was awesome!"

Let's further examine these two specific behaviors. Number one, do you need practice to do either one of them? Does either one of them go against the grain for you? Are either one of those activities helping someone else? Are either one of those activities something that you would be proud to tell your mother or your best friend that you did?

You see, these are my benchmarks for greatness. These seems simple and uncomplicated, but it is in these small ways that we demonstrate our greatness, and our greatness inspires others. As you go through your day accomplishing things or not accomplishing things, you're also having thoughts on a consistent basis. Does your thoughts included things like: who can I help today? Does your thought include things like: hmm, I wonder if I'll get caught?

You see, after a while, you begin to figure out what greatness is and what greatness isn't. Now this blog isn't about greatness; this blog is about inspiring others. You may have heard that you can tell what a person is thinking by what they do. Now if you are thinking all the good things that can happen to you, how much money you can get, is that inspiring? You're going to have to be the judge of that. I can't.

The reason I thought of this blog this morning is I found myself being selfish. You better believe there is no inspiration for anyone else for me being selfish. Selfishness only helps me. Revenge only helps me. If you are embracing those two characteristics, well they're only helping you. Let's see as an extraordinary coach if we can adopt the habit of being inspiring.

What this blog is about is that I'm giving you real world examples of what it means. In the Bible it says that he who is faithful in small things will be given greater things. The things I'm talking about seem small, but if you can be inspiring in those small ways, you can be inspiring in greater ways. We all really want to be inspiring.

I've also heard that there's no such thing as standing still. Either you're moving forward or you're moving backwards. If you have not made a conscious decision to inspire others, then you need inspiration yourself. If you are not inspiring others to great things, you're inspiring others to mediocre things. Inspiring people is a decision that you must actively make as an extraordinary coach. As an extraordinary coach, it is absolutely critical that you decide that you are going to inspire others. The most difficult thing about inspiring others is what you do the most when you're alone. What do you spend your time thinking about? What do you do when you are alone? Because it is who you are when you're alone that determines what you do.

If you are a person that spends six, seven hours a day watching television, it doesn't matter what you're watching because you're only edifying yourself. Many people have made the commitments that they love to learn. I love to learn as well, but when you learn something, just on the strength of learning it, who are you inspiring? Who are you helping? Chances are, you already know how to do something. I already know how to do something. We can be much more inspiring if we teach, because when you teach, you teach something to someone. You give them something. You give them the experience that you have when you're learning. How inspirational is that?

The key to this blog, the meat and potatoes of this blog, is that you must make a decision to be inspiring. You must actively inspire others. You must seek people to inspire, seek situations where you can inspire, or you're inspiring people to be mediocre. That's just the plain, honest truth.

I hope I've inspired you by writing this particular blog. I hope you are inspired to do great things by reading this particular blog. If you are not, someone will be inspired that I took the time to do it. If this blog has helped you, done anything for you, made you feel better, inspired you, I would love for you to pass it on to someone else. I end this blog just like I love to end all of my blogs, which is for you to have a good time until the next time.

Coaches Corner~Girl

As an extraordinary coach, you probably have clients that are trying to grow personally. You, yourself may be trying to be better than you were and when you do that, sometimes you get stumped. Every now and then I have to wonder whether or not I'm imagining that someone is insulting me or whether or not I'm truly being insulted. People that know you, people that are your friend generally are not trying to insult you. Occasionally, to teach you some lesson, someone will insult you for whatever reason. At the end of the day, most of the insults or the offenses that we take, they are purely in our mind. We then walk around not forgiving someone for something that they don't even know that they did. Of course, when we get insulted, we don't like it one little bit. Now if you find yourself getting insulted on a regular basis or having to deal with offenses on a consistent basis, there might be something that you're thinking that's making that happen.

There are 2 ways to approach this dilemma and the first way is that someone really is insulting you. Someone really is offending you, and they're offending you for any number of reasons. You have to ask yourself, what is it that you're thinking that's attracting this sort of behavior to you? What is it that you're thinking that's causing you to feel that way because typically, our subconscious minds will find a way to have us feel whatever way that we think we ought to feel. In no small way, the life that we live is of our own doings, and the thoughts that we have are of our own thinking. Only when something resonates with what we already think do we even have a reaction at all. I recently was in a discussion with a very good friend who told me that she was offended by the word "girl." The word girl conjured up images none too flattering in her mind. Now the word girl by itself is pretty antiseptic and non-toxic and why someone would think that the word girl was something awful, it would have more to do with what the someone is thinking than what the person is saying.

As she was sharing her heart with me and telling me about someone who called her a "girl" and how she had to correct him and have him stop, I innocently asked a question, "Does he like you?" All I meant was, is this person a friend or is this person a foe? I even quoted the Bible where it said, "Faithful are the wounds of a friend," and that kisses of an enemy is deceitful, which basically means that someone's actions is going to line up with who they are. If their actions do not line up with who they are, there's a very good reason, and there's a likely explanation. When someone does something that offends you, either that person is trying to offend you, or you are trying to be offended. In either case, you can change it. Back to my friend. I asked her if this person liked her. She thought, what difference does it make whether he likes me or not, which is a reasonable question. Of course, she got very emotional, and I wasn't able to really share much after that because all she did was started reliving the offense of someone calling her girl.

I have often said that what you think something is, is what that something is. What you decide things are going to be is what they are going to be. The point that I was trying to make to her was totally missed as she shared with me the idiocy of caring how a man felt about her when he treated her badly. The point that I was making to my friend, my dear friend, was that she may have been mistaking what he was saying. If it turns out that the word "girl" has images of her that's non-flattering, it would be ludicrous of her to try to get everybody in the world to quit referring to her as a "girl" because some people just do. If she wanted to set people straight each time they used the word "girl," then she was going to have a long list. I see nothing wrong with the term "girl," and the images that she conjured up when someone called her "girl," I see something wrong with that.

What I'm telling you in this blog as an extraordinary coach, be present to the fact that the reactions of your clients may not be legitimate. There is this ego defense mechanism called defensiveness and lots of people have it. This defensiveness lives purely on words called grabbers. Those are words that when people use them, they immediately cause a reaction in you. If you do not want to be at the mercy of the people outside of your brain, if you do not want to be tossed to and fro by people who do not pay your bills, then you have got to get a hold of yourself and eliminate these grabbers. Eliminating these grabbers may be a difficult thing to do but if you would go through the painstaking process of eliminating these grabbers, you will find yourself getting more healthy. Certainly it is not healthy to endure discomfort. It's not healthy to endure offenses. If someone is purposely trying to hurt you, then that's another completely different story.

What I'm suggesting is that you not allow yourself to be thrown off your game because someone used a word innocently that you perceived as something horrible. The point of this blog is that every time you think you're being offended, you're not being offended. You may just have some subconscious work to do. Those of us that are trying to get better, we probably know this. Just in case, you are an extraordinary coach, and you haven't gotten to this point yet, be on the lookout because these grabbers will sneak up on you and grab you by the throat. If you know anyone that this blog can help, I encourage you to have them read this blog. If on the other hand this blog has helped you, then go ahead and pass it on. I end this blog like I end all my blogs. I would like for you to do me a favor and have a good time until the next time.

Coaches Corner~Reactionary

Reading this particular blog, you get a whole lot on self-management. As far as I'm concerned, self-mastery is the only game in town, and as an extraordinary coach it might benefit you to adopt the idea that self-mastery is the only game in town. I would spend most of my time mastering myself. By mastering myself, I mean examining my prejudices. I mean thinking about what things mean to me. I mean examining what my main purpose is in life. For business reasons we want to have a vision for our business, and that's quite okay, but your business is only a microcosm of your life, and what's life? Apart from life there is nothing. Some people say love is everything, but love is nothing without life.

The reason I even talk about this this morning is that I want to get a little bit personal, more personal than before. As you know, I am a married person, and your marriage relationship is probably the biggest relationship in your life, and even though your marriage relationship is the biggest relationship in your life, your relationship to yourself is big as well. We all have a voice that speaks to us that says things and it filters what God is saying to us and it tells us what it thinks that we ought to be thinking. If you're wondering what voice I'm talking about, I'm talking about the voice that says, "What's he talking about?" See, that's not you, because from a spiritual standpoint you connect with me and you connect with every other spirit in the world.

This morning, I want to talk about how we, as people, put so much more on what we hear than what we put on what we say. When people say things to us we create a whole story surrounding what they say and have it mean so much more than what it means. I do that, too, and I am afflicted with the looking good and being right syndrome just like everybody else, but what I do is I reframe everything so that it benefits me so that it makes me feel like the champion that I know I am. Reframing everything causes me to feel empowered in every situation. You may think it's arrogant to desire power in every situation, and that's fine, but that's not what I think. I think to be powerful in every situation is what the human being desires.

In order to love, you must come from a place of power, and I choose to love in every circumstance. I had just been recently tapped to be the MC at an event where Dr. Bernice King, who is the daughter of the late Martin Luther King Junior, was to speak. I was excited about this thing and told everyone I knew I about it. I thought that everyone that I knew included my wife, but as it turns out, I did not include my wife in the list of people who I told about this particular event. It was an oversight on my part, but it doesn't speak to what I feel about my wife. It just speaks to me having an oversight in some cases.

Today, Labor Day, which is about three weeks from when this event takes place, I happen to mention it to a friend on the telephone and my wife overhears me, and that was the first time that she heard of it. Immediately she called me to the carpet for not telling her. After all, she is only my wife, and as being only my wife, I believe that she should feel obligated that I tell her what's going on in my life. However, the rest of what she told me was not called for and was probably just her thinking. She reminded me that I never honor her. She reminded me that I don't think that she's important. Of course I think my wife is important. I've been married to her for 23 years.

This story is not about me and my wife. This story is about you and your spouse, or you and the special person in your life. If the special person in your life does something that you have decided means something, then you have to examine your motives for believing so. If you feel that you are a champion and that you can accomplish anything in this world, then it doesn't matter to you what is said to you because the only thing that will resonate with you is the thing that you believe. If, on the other hand, you have an underlying fear of not being good enough, or if on the other hand you think that someone doesn't care about you because you don't look good enough, you're not tall enough, you're not short enough, you're not black enough, you're not white enough, or any number of "enoughs" that we can think of, then it is time for you to examine how you feel about you.

Whenever you find yourself feeling defensive or find yourself feeling out of that love place where I like to spend my time, you may want to examine why you feel that way, and you can use as an excuse something that someone said, or you can use as an excuse something that you read, but at the end of the day, anything you read or hear has absolutely zero effect on you, unless at some level you have been telling yourself those very same things. When you feel put upon by your spouse or anyone that's close to you, they are not the problem, because they are simply being themselves, and no one is obligated to do what you want to do so that you can feel good about yourself.

It is critical as an extraordinary coach that you are present to the fact that many of us suffer from this malady and many of us fall prey to thinking the wrong things about ourselves, and then holding the other person accountable when they say something that resonates with what we think about ourselves. Practice telling yourself that you love yourself. Spend time being with you and talking about how wonderful you are. Sit down, make a list of your positive traits and treat your clients the same way. Tell your clients that 99% of what happens to them is how they react to what transpires, and they are in control of how they react simply by choosing to do things before the stimulus is applied.

Feel good about yourself. Love yourself. Never think that you are less than your best, and coach your clients to do the same. Most of the relationships in our lives, if they are suffering, they are suffering because of a breakdown in the relationships that we have with ourselves. My relationship with myself is intact. You better believe it, and if you've read this blog, you've heard the story of me telling myself "I love myself " on end. You might want to tell yourself that you love yourself, because when you don't have a relationship with yourself that beats the band, well then, you're going to find yourself in victim status more often than not. You're going to find yourself depending on what someone else does or says to make you feel good about you.

Quit depending on what someone else does and depend on what you do. There's a reason that our Creator allowed us to be able to ignore things, and there's a reason that we are able to lie to ourselves, and I submit that those two characteristics are made solely for our good, just like everything else that he gave us, and if we're not using it for our good, then that's on us, not on the person that's impacting us.

Now if this blog has helped you or given you a new thought, wow, I'm excited to hear that, and I'm looking to increase the rolls of people who  are not reactive to what they hear. I'm looking to swell those rolls up so that everyone knows that they are walking in love, and slowly but surely, even the people that you think are offending you, they will begin to walk in love and stop allowing you to run their flag up and down the pole. I end this blog like I end all of my blogs, and I encourage you to have yourself a good time until the next time.

Coaches Corner~Politics

Greetings, extraordinary coaches. I want to go on record as saying that politics is a difficult game. As an extraordinary coach, you may find yourself in conversation with others during this political season, and I'm sure you have an affinity for a particular candidate, and sometimes your client has an affinity for a different one. What if we applied the technology that we use in coaching to the technology that we use in the presidency? Rather than simply lining up on one side of the aisle or the other, let's ask ourselves what's working, what's not working, what's missing, and what's next. If we do those things, I believe that we will come to a clear understanding of what the politician's job is all about.

Say that you are a politician and you have gotten 50% to 60% of the vote. There's still 40% of the people that did not vote for you who are entitled to have you look after them. Even though they didn't vote for you, they are still part of your populace, and even though your ideas might be different from their ideas, you have to find a way to keep them happy.

To begin with, people that depend on politicians for happiness, I think that that would be under the idea of what's not working. The difficulty with being a politician is that inherent in the game is a bit of stretching the truth. The truth of life in America here is that whatever you decide to have in America, you're going to have in America. Whatever results you get is going to be as a result of what you did. Granted, what you did is going to depend on what you feel, but most people don't have control of their feelings and they rely on outside forces to control their feelings. Many times that outside force is the words of a politician.

I think we all remember several years ago when President Obama rolled into the White House on a wave of enthusiasm and excitement that was heretofore unequaled. Here was the first black president, the first black president that had a beautiful family, the first black president who was as articulate as any other president, coming into the White House, and everyone loved it and his poll numbers were fantastic. Even he loved it. I mean, really, how could you not love it when you got that many people adoring you?

But now here he is, several years later, and there's an opposite truth, isn't it? Many of the people that elected him, they're criticizing him, they're disapproving of him, and that is really just the nature of things. Doubtless, President Obama wants to love people and help people, just like the rest of us. No matter what success we end up having, it really doesn't matter if we don't have anybody to share it with. It really doesn't matter if we don't have an audience to applause us for our successes. So, when someone is criticized or when their poll numbers are down, you better believe it impacts them. Perhaps it's not impacting them as much as it would impact you, and then also, perhaps it would impact you greater than what you can imagine.

The reason I'm doing this blog today is I'm just watching how the story of Dr. Ben Carson is unfolding. Dr. Ben Carson is a phenomenal human being. He's done major pediatric surgery. He's helped a whole lot of people and he wants to help a whole lot more. Now he wants to be the president of the United States, and he's receiving much accolades. He's receiving a lot of praise, he's receiving a lot of "Go, Ben, go!" But what does that really mean? That means that a lot of people are hanging their hat on what he can do for them. It means a lot of people are excited about him stepping up to become the president of the United States. He himself is really excited about it, because now he thinks that he can help even more people.

I wouldn't describe myself as a cynic, but if you got everything that you want right now, today, you probably still wouldn't be happy, because being unhappy is the default position for a human being. When we talk about happiness, we talk about how we will marry the person that makes us happy. We talk about how we can pursue our goals if it makes us happy. So if we need all these things, if we allude to all these things to make us happy, doesn't it seem like the default position is unhappy? Right now the prospect of Dr. Ben Carson becoming the president of the United States is making a lot of people happy. Some of those people are happy just because, like me, and then other sort of people are happy because they think that Dr. Ben Carson is going to do something for them.

As an extraordinary coach, you, along with your clients, want to keep ascending up that continuum of greatness. You don't want to come down that mountain. You want to go up that mountain and get better and better and better as days go by. In order for you to do that, what happens externally has to be a non-issue. Certainly you want to pick somebody, certainly you want your candidate to win. But whether or not this person or that person becomes the president of the United States is of no concern of those of us in America that are entrepreneurs, because if you are an exceptional coach, you are in the right vehicle, this capitalistic society we have in America.

Despite all its criticisms, you have the ability to do whatever it is that you want to do. Despite the complaints of inequities, you have the ability to make as much money as you want if you do what it takes to get that much money. You must, first of all, control your feelings so that it doesn't make any difference to you who wins the presidency of the United States. That cannot control you and make you happy or unhappy. The reason that you have to stay happy, the reason that you have to stay excited, is that how you feel determines what you do and what you do determines what you get.

Keep all that in mind as you ride the wave of the excitement of the presidential political season. Be excited, be involved, but be not deceived, because it's on you to make those great things happen in your life, as long as you live in America, anyway. If this blog has helped you or given you a new thought, I encourage you to share it with someone you know, and I end this blog like I end all of my blogs. I want to encourage you, today and every day, to have a good time until the next time.

Coaches Corner~Justifications

As an extraordinary coach I certainly recommend that everyone benefits from joining a Toastmasters club. The mission of a Toastmasters club is to provide a mutually supportive and a positive learning environment where every member is given the opportunity to develop communication and leadership skills which in turn fosters self confidence and personal growth. You may wonder why this blog is beginning by discussing the merits of Toastmasters and in a very few short moments you will know why.

We all want to be better than we are now and there's really nothing wrong with that. But part of our quest to be better is to say better things to yourself. Being a Toastmaster helps you communicate better and when you communicating with others you're also communicating with yourself. Being able to tell ourselves the things that we want to hear in the way that we want to hear them. It is critical that we know how to actually do that.

The thought about Toastmasters came as a result of the thought that I'm having now which is the idea of making excuses. Toastmasters teach you how to speak in front of a room and speaking to other people and that is really important. The person that has the biggest impact on you when speaking is when you are speaking to yourself. You want to become very good at articulating yourself. My attitude is one of avoiding complaining. There's a certain thing that happens to you when you complain. When you say things the things that you say they create certain pictures in your mind and those pictures in your mind create certain emotions. These emotions determine whether you do anything or not and it also determines what you do whenever you do something.

I gotta tell you since I started doing different things I started getting different things. All this is leading up to the big lesson that I want to share in this particular blog and that is about the power of excuses. When you are sharing your story with someone as you would learn to do in Toastmasters the way that you share a story also says something about you. The only message that you want to send about you is that you are a winner, you are an over comer, and you don't make excuses for your behavior. You simply put yourself under the sort of scrutiny that other people might put you through except when you put yourself through it's a lot more harsh.

I was just listening to someone on the radio who was saying that people make excuses for President Obama. People make excuses for Donald Trump. He was lamenting this as a detriment in the life of the person making an excuse. I don't think he understands exactly what's going on. No matter what you say or how you say it you hear every word that you say. Once upon a time Zig Ziglar said that he believes it's ok to talk to yourself and some people question that, but he went on to say that the only thing that would trouble him when you were talking to yourself is if you ever said "huh?." If you said something and you didn't hear what you said well that was problematic.

Getting back to what I was saying, when you complain you release certain toxic chemicals into your blood that render you ineffective at whatever it is you're trying to do. When you complain you also tend to want to invest your energy to try to rectify what it is that you're complaining about. Neither of these things is productive. If you want to talk with me about any particular person place or thing and you are criticizing it or talking about how it doesn't work for you you would get in an argument with me. It wouldn't be a real argument though because what I would really be doing would be defending the person. I don't have to defend the person when I'm talking to them. I don't have to defend the person when I'm talking to you. But whenever I defend the person I put myself in a different mindset. I absolutely am committed to not complaining, especially after I found out that complaining about somebody else complaining is complaining. Rather than complain, I simply share ideas and if they work for you fine.

As an extraordinary coach you will find that many of my ideas to work for you as me being a complainer is the last thing that crosses your mind. Whenever you are faced with a situation where someone is being criticized or condemned I urge you to reject that. By rejecting that I mean make as many excuses as you want for the person's behavior but not to excuse the person but to put yourself in a place where you want to be. You may get criticized for being soft. You might get criticized for giving some people the benefit of the doubt or letting them off the hook. Don't even concern yourself with that. What they say to you is not important. What they say to you is simply their version of a complaint.

I've been promoting the idea of forgiveness for a long time and people think that when I say forgive that I'm letting the person off the hook. Nothing could be further from the truth. I'm letting me off the hook. When I give people excuses for their behavior I'm doing it for me not them. When you get people excuses for their behavior you are doing it for you not them. Somehow this idea of giving excuses for people is letting them off the hook, you don't let anybody off the hook because they're not on the hook to begin with. They may be suffering from a negative opinion you have of them, but they're not on the hook for that. They don't even care about that because that is not on their mind. The crux of this blog is make excuses for other people's bad behavior, so that you can forgive them, so that you can walk in love. Eliminate the concern that others may have about you letting them off the hook or about you being soft because at the end of the day none of those people are paying your bills or doing anything else for you that matters.   All you are concerned with is those destructive chemicals you release into your bloodstream when you complain.

If this blog has helped you or giving you a new thought please by all means share it with somebody. I end this blog like it and all of my blogs encouraging you to have a good time until the next time.