Although these suggestions are straightforward, most of them will require constant attention for a little while until they become habitual. Once they become automatic, though, you’ll be thrilled with your progress.

Try these ideas to enjoy greater success:

1. Hang out with successful individuals. You’ll frequently find that you achieve about as much as the people with whom you spend the most time. If you want to be successful, affiliate as often as you can with people who are more successful than you. There are a couple of reasons for this:

• You’ll be exposed to a completely different way of thinking and interacting with the world. Very successful people look at many things differently than those who are less successful. Integrating some of these ideas into your own thinking will likely bring you more successes of your own.
• You’ll also encounter new opportunities. High-achieving people frequently have all kinds of ventures going on; you never know when they might need a helping hand. You’ll also get to connect with their peer group, who are likely to be very successful as well.

2. Adjust your attitude. Successful people usually have a positive attitude. That’s what allows them to move forward aggressively. This is not the same as acting foolishly, however.

• Minor challenges don’t bog them down because they believe that things will work out in the end. They also keep the bigger picture in mind, so minor challenges are just that – minor.
• If you want to be wealthy, do you have positive attitudes about wealth and wealthy people? If you want to be healthy, do you have a positive outlook about that? Your attitudes must be congruent with your objectives.
• Everything starts internally; seeing outside changes in your life takes time.

3. Be organized and focused. Before you go to bed each night, make a list with all the things you want to accomplish the next day. Doing this at night gives your brain a chance to work on things in your sleep. Also, you’ll feel much better when you can start the day with a clear objective instead of spending time trying to figure out what to do.

4. Have goals. Your brain is tremendously good at finding solutions. You can help it out by doing a good job of outlining and prioritizing your objectives. The simplest way to do this is to write down your goal and include a deadline. Now your brain knows what to work on and when to have it accomplished.

• Read over your goals at least twice a day to provide mental emphasis that they’re important. We all know how easy it is to get sidetracked by 50 other things and forget all about our goals and plans.

These four simple ideas can bring you great power, if you’ll use them to your advantage.

Being successful is really no more challenging than being unsuccessful. Both require specific actions and attitudes applied consistently over a period of time. Make some changes today and give yourself the gift of success.

As a Life Coach, making your clients aware of the benefits of meditation as well as giving them tips on how best to meditate will significantly enhance your coaching sessions and add tremendous value for your clients.

Starting a Meditative Practice

Want to know what the hardest part of meditation is? Here’s a hint: It has nothing to do with meditation at all!

The hardest part is simply making the time to meditate. Once you believe in its power and see its results, you won’t let anything get in the way of you and your peaceful practice. It might be tough in the beginning, but stay with it! It’ll be well worth the effort.

Make a goal for yourself and evaluate your progress as you go. Commit to at least weekly meditations for four weeks. After this time, evaluate whether the meditation has made a positive difference your life.

These meditation tips will help you and they will help your coaching clients in their quest for obtaining inner peace:

Choose a time to meditate. Find a good time for you to meditate. You can start with shorter sessions in the beginning, but generally you should shoot for between 30 minutes to an hour during each session. Right when you get up or before you go to bed are good times to practice. Make meditation a priority for yourself just like you would for everything else that’s important in your life.

Keep an elevated posture. If you slouch, you won’t be in a good position for meditation and you’re more likely to feel like falling asleep. Elevate your posture and you’ll feel more open to the world. Relax in a crossed legged or other comfortable sitting position and rest your hands in your lap.

Focus on your breath. Your main goal is to keep your attention on your breath as you breathe in and breathe out. It may help to say a mantra and visualize breathing in good energy and letting out the bad energy with each cycle. Breathe at a pace that’s comfortable for you. Work toward deep, long breaths.

Acknowledge your thoughts. You want to remain fully present while you’re meditating, and there’s no doubt that thoughts are going to enter your mind while you’re trying to concentrate. Don’t be frustrated by these thoughts, but at the same time don’t let thoughts take your attention completely away. Acknowledge your thoughts and then bring your focus back to your breath.

Fight the urge to sleep. Many people complain of the urge to sleep during meditation sessions, mainly because it’s relaxing and you’re meditating during early morning or late evening hours. Try to remain awake with focus and good posture.

Maintain your practice. After you discover the many benefits of meditating, it will most likely become a part of you forever. You may not have time to do this every day, but it’s important to keep up with regular meditation sessions.

Meditation will help you keep a peaceful perspective on life and can tell you a lot of things about your true self. You can use it to relax, motivate, or energize you, depending on your purpose for each session. As you get more experienced with meditation, a more joyful and peaceful life will be yours!

Try these ideas to enjoy greater success:

1. Hang out with successful individuals. You’ll frequently find that you achieve about as much as the people with whom you spend the most time. If you want to be successful, affiliate as often as you can with people who are more successful than you. There are a couple of reasons for this:

2. Adjust your attitude. Successful people usually have a positive attitude. That’s what allows them to move forward aggressively. This is not the same as acting foolishly, however.

• You’ll be exposed to a completely different way of thinking and interacting with the world. Very successful people look at many things differently than those who are less successful. Integrating some of these ideas into your own thinking will likely bring you more successes of your own.

• You’ll also encounter new opportunities. High-achieving people frequently have all kinds of ventures going on; you never know when they might need a helping hand. You’ll also get to connect with their peer group, who are likely to be very successful as well.
  

• Minor challenges don’t bog them down because they believe that things will work out in the end. They also keep the bigger picture in mind, so minor challenges are just that – minor.

• If you want to be wealthy, do you have positive attitudes about wealth and wealthy people? If you want to be healthy, do you have a positive outlook about that? Your attitudes must be congruent with your objectives.

• Everything starts internally; seeing outside changes in your life takes time.

3.  Be organized and focused. Before you go to bed each night, make a list with all the things you want to accomplish the next day. Doing this at night gives your brain a chance to work on things in your sleep. Also, you’ll feel much better when you can start the day with a clear objective instead of spending time trying to figure out what to do.

4. Have goals. Your brain is tremendously good at finding solutions. You can help it out by doing a good job of outlining and prioritizing your objectives. The simplest way to do this is to write down your goal and include a deadline. Now your brain knows what to work on and when to have it accomplished.

• Read over your goals at least twice a day to provide mental emphasis that they’re important. We all know how easy it is to get sidetracked by 50 other things and forget all about our goals and plans.

These 4 simple ideas can bring you great power, if you’ll use them to your advantage.

Being successful is really no more challenging than being unsuccessful. Both require specific actions and attitudes applied consistently over a period of time. Make some changes today and give yourself the gift of success.

Maybe you always thought you’d be a teacher, an engineer, a sales executive, or a hospital nurse. But things didn’t go that way and you ended up doing something else instead.

However, now you’ve reached a point where you’re seriously considering a career change. Maybe you got laid off or worked for a company that went under. Maybe you are just looking to change what you do to earn money. Maybe you are looking for something more than just money. Perhaps self-growth, a more fulfilling life, a desire to help others.

Before you take the plunge, do your homework.

Consider these issues whenever you’re contemplating a career change:

1. What kind of work do you want to do? Do you have a couple of top choices or just one? If you’re considering a career change, you may already know the answer to this question.

2. Is the job you want to do within your reach? See if you can simply build on what you already know to pursue a new job. If you’re 40 years old and have no college education and want to be a doctor, that might be an overly ambitious goal. However, if you’ve already got a bachelors’ degree in business and you want to be a trainer, you could probably complete a few months of education to obtain your certification.

3. Does the career you want require training or education or certification? Education requires energy and drive. Do you have that for your dream career?

4. Interview someone who has the job. Write down all the questions you have about the career path. If you know someone personally who has the job you long for, give him a call. People love to talk about what they know.

5. Research the career on the internet. You’ll find a wealth of information online on every kind of job.

6. Check into local resources. If you need coursework or technical training, find out where you can get it in your town or one nearby.

7. Look into your local prospects. Are there local jobs available in the field? Unless you’re willing to move for your job, ensure you’d be able to do the work where you’re now living.

8. Consider costs involved with re-education and training. If you have some savings, there’s nothing better to invest in than your future. Depending on the field that interests you, you might even be able to obtain loans to complete your coursework or training requirements.

9. Assess your time commitment. How much time will you need to prepare to look for work in the field? Depending on the career you’re considering, you might be able to start right away. Or your dream job might require three or four years of education or training first.

10. Just do it! One of the most exciting experiences you’ll ever have is engaging in the work of your dreams. Although you might feel some initial fear and apprehension about making a career change, you’ll find yourself also full of joy and anticipating your future with great excitement.

You may already have the answers to all of your questions. You may know intuitively what’s right for you. If that’s the case, then go out there and snag your dream job! If not, spend some time looking over these suggestions and get started on your preparations.

The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll be enjoying your new career.

Consider the follow strategies to help your children take command of their lives and grow up to be more productive and happy.

Understanding the Basic Principles of Leadership

1. Develop emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is the basis for sound leadership. Kids can work on accurately identifying specific feelings in themselves and others and managing them constructively. This way they’ll solve emotional issues more easily, get along better with others and avoid destructive behavior.
2. Generate compassion. Keep the focus on caring for others. Let your children know that the purpose of becoming more influential is to have a positive impact on society. Life is full of opportunities to serve others and recognize that we’re all connected.
3. Take charge of your life. Show kids they can take an active role in making things happen. Help them to understand that they create their own outcomes rather than viewing life as something that happens to them.

Leadership Development Strategies for Younger Children

1. Delay gratification. There are valuable life lessons in learning to plan ahead and work for rewards. For example, help your kids to understand that by going to bed on time, they get a longer bedtime story.
2. Learn to read emotions in faces. It’s important to become sensitive to non-verbal cues. Play games with your own facial expressions or you can draw pictures. Discuss how someone may look if they were preparing to eat an ice cream cone versus surprised by a loud noise.
3. Choose your words carefully. Encourage kids to select words that convey their affection for others. Ask them to talk about what they like about their siblings or friends.
4. Practice teamwork. Demonstrate that it’s fun and effective to cooperate with others. Spend time washing dishes or picking up toys together. Sign up for softball or split up into teams for playing charades.
5. Mind your manners. Show kids how to act appropriately in different social situations. Praise your kids for mastering basic table manners and acting as gracious hosts when you have guests in your home.

Leadership Development Strategies for Tweens and Teens

1. Engage in conversation and public speaking. Communication skills play a big part in leadership. Use family dinners as an opportunity for an in-depth discussion of current events. Presenting a report in class is valuable training for their future careers.
2. Set goals. Kids naturally become more motivated and accomplished when they take ownership of their own goals. Present options to your kids but encourage them to choose the objectives they want to pursue.
3. Think like a critic. Support your child’s growing capacity for critical thought. They can evaluate their performance in different situations to identify areas where they want to improve. Even TV shows can be a trigger to discuss peer pressure and making ethical decisions.
4. Take on leadership tasks. Learning to motivate people and delegate tasks requires practice. Talk about taking the initiative at a summer job or internship to play a leadership role. It could be as simple as putting together a potluck family picnic.
5. Develop organizational skills. Young people can hone their management skills by overseeing complex projects. Appoint your teen to take charge of the logistics for a family vacation or college tour. They may even want to start a small business or charity.

Getting your kids off to a good start with leadership skills can create a better life for them and help them to become a positive influence on others. When children learn to manage themselves and get along with others, they’re better prepared for happiness and success.

 How can you achieve such a positive quality of life? And how – as a Life Coach – can you help your clients achieve it? 

1. Know what makes your heart sing. Be connected with your own feelings, wants and needs. What makes you feel truly happy? No matter what it is – listening to music, spending time with your kids or talking on the phone with a friend from college – make room for those things that fill your heart with joy.  
2. Spend time in nature as often as you can. It’s no secret that when you’re under pressure at work, escaping into nature will bring you back to feelings of peace and tranquility. A walk in the park, sitting on a bench gazing into a lake or trudging down your street feeling the snow beneath your boots will bring you back to what’s real. 
3. Pause and reflect each day. Stop yourself from the rush and hub-bub of life. Sit quietly and reflect on how you feel, how you’re spending your time that day and whether you’re happy with how your life is going. 
4. Learn something. Nothing enhances the quality of your life like gaining knowledge. Exposing yourself to new information will make you hunger for more intellectual stimulation. And intellectual stimulation enhances what you think, how you feel and how you live.  
5. Interact with another human on a genuine level. Sometimes at work, you go through the motions of being social. “Hello, how are you?… I’m fine.” Interacting on a genuine level means you “get real” with the other person. Tell them what’s actually on your mind today. How is your day truly going? Be real with someone every day. 
6. No matter what you do during the day, put all your effort into it. If you’re going to engage in a task, focus on it, think about it and complete it. Make an effort. Put your heart and soul into it. Also, strive for improvement in whatever you do. 
7. Live consciously each day. Stay connected with yourself daily. Ponder how you relate to your family members. Think about how you fulfill your role at work. Consider what you eat, drink and do each day. Live life with a purpose.  
8. Do what you want to do. Find time in each day to engage in activities that you want to do. Go for a walk. Work out at the gym. Read to your kids. Get your art tools out. Follow your heart and do something that pleases you. 
9. Make time for social activities. You’ll notice yourself feeling better about life whenever you attend social activities that you choose. Chat, laugh and have fun! Social activities round out your life and provide you with balance.
10. Help your community. Are you familiar with what your community offers? Can you name 4 or 5 charities or community programs that you find helpful and worthwhile? If so, contact one or two of them and offer your assistance. Be a part of something bigger than yourself.

 You’ll be surprised at how satisfying it is to help others, no matter how you do it. If you haven’t yet acquainted yourself with your community’s offerings, make it a point to do so. Your life will be enriched. And if you enable your coaching clients to be guided by these same strategies, their lives will be enriched as well.

As you can see, there are many elements to an enhanced quality of life. The good news is that you can work to improve just one of these areas at a time or as many as you want. Focus on living your life to the fullest. Discover the beauty of an enhanced quality of life.

Accepting yourself completely entails courage, wisdom and compassion. If you’re plagued by negative emotions such as anxiety, jealousy, shame, anger, envy, or guilt, these may be signs of low self-esteem. To counter this, you can learn radical self-acceptance.

If you find yourself equating your worth with your achievements, love life or social status, what happens if these are someday diminished? After all, these are temporary conditions. Life has its ups and downs. Practicing self-acceptance will help prevent your self-worth from hinging on your current situation.

How Low Self-Esteem Can Hinder Self-Acceptance

If you have low self-esteem, you can get mired in refusal to accept your own uniqueness and capability for transformation. You may be a perfectionist, and when things don’t go well, you often tell yourself that you’re not good enough. It becomes a vicious cycle of negative self-fulfilling prophecies.

So what can you do to turn this around?

Suppose you start to appreciate the world around you. Then you’re aware of your place. You realize that just as others are important to your well-being, your existence supports others, too. Since appreciation is a prerequisite for self-esteem, you’re now well on your way to self-acceptance.

How to Develop Self-Acceptance

To develop self-acceptance, you must believe in your intrinsic worth and uniqueness. There’s no one else in the world quite like you and you’re constantly changing and developing. Your value cannot be measured by how others perceive you.

You’re also aware of the fallibility of human nature. No one is perfect. Even the most enlightened among us had to struggle to achieve their goals. Likewise, you must also work to improve yourself. Let this be your joy.

When you make a mistake, refrain from judging yourself. Resist labeling yourself as a failure or a bad person because of past errors. You wouldn’t label your child a failure or a loser because he failed a test. Be compassionate with yourself too.

Accept Your Mistakes and Move On

When you review your mistakes, you may feel remorse and disappointment, but these are healthy reactions. They’ll help you to change your behavior to something you like better.

Remorse and disappointment are different from self-condemnation, which can lead to depression, guilt and shame. These unhealthy emotions may cause you to give up or avoid facing your mistakes. Instead, look toward what you can do to change your actions next time.

Try these strategies to increase your self-acceptance:

1. Avoid excusing yourself from your mistakes. It’s okay to tell yourself that you’re human and prone to error, but if you use this to refuse to face your mistakes, you won’t grow. Instead, work on improving yourself. This will help you accept what you did but put it in the past and move on.
2. Use positive self-talk. Refrain from calling yourself names like “idiot,” “total failure” or “loser.” Get in the habit of complimenting yourself instead. Reinforce the qualities about you that you like by telling yourself things like “I can do this,” “I’m good at this,” “Forgiving others is perfectly like me,” or “I can find a solution to this challenge.”
3. Be tolerant and compassionate with yourself, just as you are with your friends. Judge your behavior, not yourself.

Following these guidelines will help you gain greater self-acceptance. It may take some practice to master these new ways of thinking about yourself, but the rewards will be worth it.

And if you are a Life Coach, don’t forget to make your clients become more accepting of themselves as well. Soon they will be enjoying life more and find it more fulfilling than they ever imagined!

As their Life Coach, discuss with them the following:
 
1. Consider your values: Project into the future and imagine how you’ll feel about your choice. It can be easy to go down the wrong path during difficult times; stick to your core values and you’ll feel much better in the end.

2. Avoid allowing fear to paralyze you: If you’re in danger of falling off a cliff, fear serves a purpose. However, if you tend to fear any change, then it’s wise to make a concerted effort to keep this fear out of your decision making process. A fear of change can prevent you from seriously considering any of your options and keep you from making any decision at all.

3. Make a list of pros and cons: What will you potentially gain and lose from each of the options available to you? Make a list of your options and look at things from that perspective. Draw a line down the middle of your page and put the pros on one side and the cons on the other for each option. This exercise clarifies your choices.

4. What are your long-term goals? What is your vision of your ideal life? Which option is most supportive of that vision?

5. Set a deadline: Decide how long it should take you to make up your mind and stick to it. Consider how much reflection and information gathering time you should need. When that time has come and gone, promise yourself that you’ll make a decision and stick with it. Is spending another week in turmoil really going to help you make up your mind?
 
6. Realize that it doesn’t matter (much): When you are faced with a couple of good choices, either choice may work out fine. For example, if you’re stuck between two different chicken salad options on the menu, is it really going to matter in the long run? Regardless of which one you select, you’ll likely enjoy it either way!

Simply making the choice and following through consistently will yield great results. Not making up your mind gets you nowhere fast. If you really can’t choose, flip a coin and get busy. You’ll be much further ahead than if you never choose anything at all.

Making decisions quickly takes practice. It’s counter-productive to become so worried about making a wrong decision that you never choose anything at all. Have your clients follow the process above and help them make a decision.
 
In most cases, the act of making the decision is the powerful aspect, not which option is ultimately selected. If you didn’t reject an option immediately, it’s probably not too bad.

So ask your clients to make up their minds and get busy living their lives!

Myth #1: Coaching is a fad and will go away

The profession has been around for years, even centuries – after all, even Socrates was a coach! It is the number one home-based business to start according to Entrepreneur Magazine, and Money Magazine ranks it as the second fastest growing business. It is booming and growing and has sustainable outcomes that stick. Coaching works and is here to stay. Certified Coaches continue to attract individual clients and corporate clients with great ease because of the high demand for coaching.

Myth #2: Most coaches must coach full-time to generate substantial income

As a matter of fact, Life Coaching – in addition to being an extremely rewarding career in itself – opens up a lot of additional avenues, such as consulting, corporate training, workshops, writing, speaking etc. A lot of coaches integrate these additional revenue generators into their coaching practice. Coaching clients is part of what they do. In fact, we advise our students to begin their coaching practice by coaching a few hours a week at first and slowly expanding their hours as they gain experience and increase their client base. Complete flexibility and control over their own lives is what coaches love most about this profession.

Myth #3: Coaching is therapy

This is perhaps the most common misconception about coaching that is out there. When – as a coach – you ask your clients in-depth questions about them, their relationships, their careers, their goals, and listen to them talk a lot, it is naturally going to be therapeutic for them. They’re going to understand themselves better and figure things out. But that is a by-product of the process, not the main outcome. The point of coaching is not to make your clients feel better about themselves, but to come alongside them to help them achieve their goals.

Myth #4: A coach does not need formal training or certification

While that is true in theory, the fact is that clients check credentials before they hire a coach. CCA Certified Coaches go through a professional training program and bring their life and work experience to the coaching profession. They take classes in co-creative relationship, building rapport, asking powerful questions, barriers to coaching, time management, assertiveness coaching, achieving client goals, personal and business issues, specialty niches, to name just a few. It is a well-deserved credential that shows they are extraordinary coaches, and it separates them from the rest of the field.

Myth #5: Coaching is some kind of mystical experience

Coaching is not a mystical experience any more than weight training is a mystical experience. You’re going to have the endorphin rush, sure. But the real point is making your body stronger. Similarly, coaching is about disciplined, well-considered action towards a specific objective.

So, as you make decisions about launching your own coaching career, keep yourself informed about this wonderful and fast growing career and do stay clear of these myths!

The NASA International Lunabotics Mining Competition 2011 will be held at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida from May 23rd to May 28th, and a team from India – the BIT Mesra (Patna campus) team, Gurutva – has qualified to present their proposal.

And we at Symbiosis Coaching are proud to be their Corporate sponsor in this endeavor!

The Event

This is a flagship event organized by NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and one of the biggest in the calendar year.

The NASA Lunabotics Mining Competition is a University Level competition designed to engage and retain students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and encourage them to innovate. NASA will directly benefit from the project by encouraging the development of innovative lunar excavation techniques which may result in clever ideas and solutions that could be applied to an actual lunar excavation device or payload.

The event will last five days – May 23^rd to May 28^th, 2011. The challenge for qualifying teams is to build a remote controlled or autonomous excavator that can collect a minimum of 10 kilos of lunar simulant in 15 minutes. The complexities of the challenge include the abrasive characteristics of the lunar simulant, the weight and size limitations of the lunabot and the ability to control the robot from a remote controlled center.

Winners of this competition will get an opportunity to participate in the NASA Desert RATS. NASA also plans to incorporate the winning design into its scheme of things while planning its Moon mission 2020 barring a few changes which may be deemed appropriate by NASA Engineers/Scientists.

The Gurutva Robot

The focus of the competition is on developing a low cost and technologically superior rover/excavator. The Gurutva team robot is designed on the principle of Archimedes Screw. The Screw works at its highest efficiency between the angles of 45-60 degrees. The Gurutva team has gone through a number of trials for different designs, and for the conditions that they are expected to follow – the Moon’s conditions – the Archimedes is the best and most efficient option, as the vacuum assists in retrieving dust from the ground and delivering it to the sump tank. The weight of the bot is 80 Kg and its dimensions are 1.5m x 0.75m x 2m.

Go India!

We at Symbiosis Coaching – in keeping with our philosophy of contributing positively to the Indian society – are proud to play our part in this endeavor and to help our students present their proposal to NASA.

We wish the Gurutva team the very best in their endeavor. As they say at NASA – good luck and God speed!