Let me tell you about the book.

As a professional coach I help people to be more, see more, and achieve more that really matters in their personal lives, relationships, and careers, start to finish.  As you may know, I have also spent my life as clergy helping people enrich their lives as they integrate their faith into daily experiences.

I have created a lifestyle of continuing personal development and I have a passion for helping others in their development. I believe we can be more, see more, and achieve more than we ever imagined.  It’s about paying attention and working hard to being excellent managers of the life entrusted to us, reaching more of our potential, and enjoying a wonderful, satisfying outcome at the same time.

An essential component of such living is planning and acting on your plan to reach your potential. This helps avoid as much regret as possible. Sometimes, in spite of our best efforts, relationships and life-situations don’t turn out as we had hoped. Rather than wallowing in a bog of regret, we can transform our perspective on these situations into a hopeful, potential-filled outlook.

In my life, I’ve had some rough, challenging waters to navigate and had some grievous experiences as I am sure you have. And, I’ve made my share of mistakes. But I don’t live with feelings of regret for any of it. Instead, I am grateful for these experiences and hopeful about how they can contribute to my life’s mission.

I Can Teach You How

I wrote this book in about a year from first words on the page to the product you will enjoy. But it took me 58 years to develop the message.

I can teach you how to live out exactly what the book title states — Without Regret: Be More, See More, Achieve More that Really Matters. In the book I teach you a 3-point process – form, perform, transform – and provide tips, tools, and access to even more bonus tools and videos online. And, it won’t take you 58 years to get it all in place. My coaching clients begin seeing results in just months.

This book is  for adults who want to experience life without regret.  It enjoys glowing endorsements from 45 different men and women from the professions and clergy.

I want you to benefit from this book!   BUT …

Please WAIT to buy until July 2, 2013 which is the official “launch.” If you can’t buy on that day, buy that week. The reason is that I want to register as many sales as possible during this period of time in an attempt to get the book on a best seller list.

Up to this point, I had no interest in a “best seller.” But I was helped to realize that getting on such a list could make the book more visible, get its message into many more hands, and achieve my primary goal of opening more opportunities to serve people in their development.

You are the key. And I need your help. In return, I can only offer you the satisfaction of helping boost awareness about the book to many who will be changed forever by it.

The book is available on amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Books-a-Million, and other book sources.  If you don’t see it, please ask for it.   Watch for promotional and teaching videos. I’ll keep you informed so you don’t miss any opportunities.

Please tell your friends and broadcast this through your social networks.  Someone you know needs to move toward their potential and live in freedom, Without Regret.

“I should have . . .” carries a sentiment of regret. Usually, the person speaking is beating themselves up for not knowing how to do differently at the time or failing to do what they knew.

“You should have . . .” carries an air of judgment. The person speaking is placing themselves in position to know better than you and puts you in a position of falling short. This can hurt relationships and result in regret.

Albert Ellis, father of rational emotive therapy, who was known for his colorful language, coined the phrase, “Don’t should on yourself.” Say that fast a couple of times and you’ll begin to get it.  Granted, sometimes “should” fits, like “We should follow the law, respect others, do no harm.” But if you are in the habit of “shoulding” on yourself or others, ask yourself, “How helpful is it?”

When we hear “shouldy” statements in our family, we lightly call it to the attention of the person speaking and ask them to rephrase their statement. We don’t swear at each other and we don’t allow others to speak badly to themselves.

We choose to express ourselves in more nurturing ways such as:

“I would like to have . . .”

“I would like for you to have . . .”

“What could you have done differently about . . .?”

“I would rather have . . .”

“Next time, I will . . .”

I try to avoid “should” altogether as a strategy for living without regret and I’ll be letting you in on more strategies for living Without Regret in the weeks to come.

What’s been your experience of regret and “shoulds”?

The Book

In a few weeks, my book entitled Without Regret: Be More, See More, and Achieve More that Really Matters will make its debut and be available at amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and other book sources including discoveryourtruecourse.com.

The book will give you valuable perspectives and tools for living in a way that is more

• Expansive
• Free
• Grateful
• Hopeful
• Full of potential

Readers will learn how to access additional tools on the web.

Video Briefs

In addition, I will be hosting 10+ teaching sessions, each 3-4 minutes in length, which will highlight and reinforce principles from the book.  These are suitable for passing along to a friend or loved one to challenge them toward life without regret.  Access these on YouTube or at discoveryourtruecourse.com

Coaching

And, most who get serious about living without regret engage coaching support.   True Course is happy to explore this possibility with you along with other support we can offer.  Contact us through discoveryourtruecourse.com

For now, let me offer three important tips for living without regret. 

1. FORM a plan based on a clear understanding of who you are and why you are here
2. PERFORM your plan courageously
3. TRANSFORM your regret into a learning opportunity for living a hopeful, meaningful, and purposeful life.

Simple in concept.  Not so easy in practice.  But, I’m confident these steps work because they’ve been proven in my life and in the lives of my clients. This book is a culmination of all my years of study and work—drawing from personal experience, academic research, theoretical roots, and the faith that is such a deep and integral part of my life.

I look forward to sharing more with you in the weeks to come.

If the issue is particularly complex, it’s easy to slide deep into the quicksand of trying to exhaust the varied aspects of the issue along with their implications for the future.  You can become too cautious, fearful, and sometimes you may feel like you can’t make a decision.  You feel stuck.

Here are 4 secrets to help you achieve more by thinking less:

Understand how your brain works.

•  Your working memory can manage only a few aspects of an issue at a time.  As the thoughts keep coming, some can get lost.  When a thought is lost to memory, you  remember there was a thought but not exactly what it was.  The shadow of the lost thought along with all of the other incoming thoughts make for increasing stress.

Maximize your mental resources.

• Keep up with the issues as they come to you by recording them on your smartphone or notepad.  As you work toward a decision, strike off (don’t erase or delete) thoughts/issues that become unimportant.
• Managing thoughts and ideas by writing and sorting will free mental resources to focus on the most important and look beyond the self-evident options to the bigger picture and even more, possibly better, options.
• Talk it out with someone.

Reduce the decision to simplest terms.

• Gather data quickly and thoroughly.
• Ask questions about the issues to determine relevance and discard the irrelevant.
  • Does this really matter to the decision or is it just a related thought?
  • What difference will it make if this item is not considered?
  • Which of the items, if not considered, could lead to an undesirable outcome?
  • Which of the items, if strongly considered, could lead to a most desirable outcome?

Take action as soon as possible.

•  As you act, you will learn more about the issue and gain clarity about next steps.  If you don’t act you may find yourself only thinking about your thinking.
• Build flexibility into your actions steps.  This will allow you to move forward without requiring all the foreknowledge you may want.
• Be willing to take action and make adjustments on the fly.  When you require everything to be in place before taking action you create a longer decision-making process and waste time considering things that may not even be issues as action is taken.

Be adaptive in your action and leadership. Courageously take well-considered risks and learn in action.  If you will, you can achieve more that really matters.

• Think rationally
• Understand
• Remember
• Exercise good judgment
• Make decisions
• Inhibit thoughts and behaviors
• Control unwanted, negative thoughts and responses
• Accurately interpret data (accidental connections) which leads
  to generalization
• Effectively identify problems and solve problems
• Take risks
• Be optimistic

Here are tips for managing fear and anxiety to achieve more:

1. Embrace the fear and anxiety you have about the action.  Don’t resist or deny it but don’t wallow in it either.
2. Focus on breathing deeply – belly breathing – more often and anxiety will lower.
3. Get the anxiety and fear into the light.  Name what you are feeling.   Write it out and/or talk with a friend, confidant, coach, or therapist.
4. Identify the generator of your fear or anxiety.  Is it fear of:  job loss, control, credibility, reputation, comfort, security, or prestige?  Is it a fear of embarrassment, disrespect, feeling you are unworthy, failure?   Something else?
5. Envision a positive outcome.  Focus on what you want and not what you don’t want as a result of your action–on the positive and expansive versus the negative and limited.
6. Identify the “worst thing” that could happen as you take action.   How would you live with this and act in light of it if the “worst” becomes reality?
7. Believe that the failure of a good-faith effort can be the precursor to success.  We learn our greatest success lessons from what sometimes seems the worst.
8. Be confident that no matter what happens there are always alternative routes to the goal.
9. Feel the fear, keep your planning dynamic, and courageously move toward your goal.
10. Affirm that baby steps are good and certainly better than no steps and eventually add up to big steps.  But, don’t settle for baby steps when you can take a giant step.

John Wooden said,

Success is never final, failure is never fatal.   It’s courage that counts.

Clear the way to achieve more by managing the fear and moving toward your goal.

How do you manage the fear and anxiety that comes with a big decision or  moving toward a big achievement?

• Be more in your essential self, your person and
• See big possibilities, in the moment and for the future.

Moving to action is aimless and meaningless without attention to being and seeing.   Being and seeing without action makes little difference in the world.  Note this from Joel Barker

Vision without action is just a dream.
Action without vision just passes the time.
Vision with action can change the world.

How about 7 Tips to Help You Achieve More that Matters?  Here they are:

• Act in light of who you are becoming.  Human development never stops.  Capitalize on your strengths, personality, talents, gifts, experience, and education.  Do what you and only you can do.

• Create clear goals beginning with a written personal mission statement.  Then use SMART goals that contribute to your mission.

• Ruthlessly manage your priorities to tightly focus on mission.

• Be aware of opportunities in the moment.  Many opportunities to do something that really matters can be overlooked when you pay too much attention to the future or the past.

• Think enough but not too much.  You can over-think the issue and experience the paralysis of analysis.  Or you can be too impulsive, move too fast, and without sufficient calculation.  Get enough information, process it, and act.

• Take courage.   Feel the fear and take action anyway.

• Be open to mistakes and failure.  Learning opportunities will dramatically increase as you move into action.  Keep learning, adapting, and moving forward to your vision.

For a more in-depth treatment of the above, watch for Without Regret: Be More, See More, Achieve More that Really Matters coming to Amazon.com and other bookstores soon.

What usually holds you back from taking action?

From time to time, everyone needs to put on their headphones, close their eyes, and see more of what their ideal, most desirable life would look like, rehearse it, and experience it mentally.  If we hooked you up to a monitor or scanner what would it tell us about what you see for your life?  What movement would we notice?  What nerves would be firing?

How can you clearly envision your life and open the door to seeing more?

• Start where you are and with your current resources.
• Break your thinking into focus areas such as career, personal, family and/or physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and intellectual.
• Intentionally take time to think and dream.  Some will prefer writing for this process, others will prefer conversation.
• Imagine the best possibilities.
• Focus on what you want and not what has been.  Take things to your next level.
• Think through detail.
• Never say “never,” “I can’t,” or “I’ll try.”  Doubt confuses the mental process and the outcome.
• Be a dream maker not a dream killer.

When things don’t go as you envisioned, put the headphones back on, close your eyes, and see it again in light of what you learned.

Of course, retirement is a socio-economic and cultural phenomenon, a product of the rise of industrialism. In many other cultures there is no such thing as retirement.   The aged remain active and are revered for their wisdom and the experience is valued.   Prior to the rise of the industrial age, there was no such thing as retirement in countries now industrialized.

As some adults reach retirement they gather a number of limiting beliefs like “Now that I am retired…”

• My opportunity to contribute is over.
• People no longer want what I have to offer.
• I will die soon, that’s all that’s left for me to do.
• What I do is unrelated to what I did before retirement.
• I must be as active as I was in pre-retirement to really make a contribution.
• I’m not worth as much as I was before.

For some there are realizations:

• I am busier than ever but not making the difference I want.
• What I am doing is fun but will not last beyond my death.
• I don’t know what to do with myself now that I am retired.
• I planned for financial security but not for making a difference after retirement.

7 ways to see more for your whole life:

• Dream.  Envision what you will do.  If you could do whatever you want that will make a maximum difference in the world, what would it be? Don’t judge or limit your dreams. What you do will likely be related to what you have done all your life, but now you get to choose who, what, when, where, and how.
• Create opportunities. Get busy and experiment with possibilities.  Don’t wait for opportunities to come to you and define your vision.  Find a need and fill it.
• Build relationships with younger people. They want the experience you have to offer but they want a real relationship with you first.
• Stay mentally and emotionally flexible. Be open to new ways of thinking. Cultivate the ability and resources for bouncing back emotionally.
• Be open to new things.  You may discover a new way to apply your talents, gifts, personality, and experience.
• See your body as an asset, not an excuse.  Rise above the aches and pains, giving them as little attention as possible and reasonable and focus on what you can do.
• Use the abilities and resources you have. If you can use the phone or computer, you have access to the world and you can make a difference in the world.

If you are 30 or you are 100, these principles will work for you.

What would you add to these ideas about seeing more for your whole life?

Your awareness of issues and possibilities around you in the present and your ability to envision possibilities for the future can also be impaired.   This results in unrealized potential, social clumsiness, and discouragement.

Just as most impairment of physical vision can be improved, your present awareness and ability to envision future possibilities can be strengthened.  Our ability to clearly see more that matters in life is a  pre-requisite for achieving more in life.  You can clearly see more that matters if you will:

• Be curious about possibilities beyond that which is currently evident.  Look around you in 360 degree fashion and ask questions about possibilities.
• Use your imagination to envision the novel, creative, out-of-the-box possibilities.
• Dream big without being quick to judge your ideas.  We judge our dreams because we are taught from childhood to do so and, to a degree, appropriately so.  Judging is often too quick and too severe, however.
• See a bigger more integrated picture.    Be aware of how you affect other people and situations.  Be aware of how they affect you.   Look beyond your world to how you can make a difference in the bigger world.  We put blinders on horses to limit their sight to what is directly ahead.  Take off your blinders and see a wider view than that immediately in front of you.
• Avoid dream killers, the unimaginative, and the uninspired.  When you need to critique what you have seen, there will be plenty of these to draw from.
• Drive out your limiting beliefs.  We create limited beliefs that say, “I can’t” or “It’s not possible.”  We learn from the voices of others to tell ourselves all the reasons an idea is invalid or won’t work.  You may adopt this as a way of being reasonable and protecting your good name.
• Take a chance.  Don’t be afraid of being wrong or different.  If you are not prepared to be wrong and/or different you won’t be creative.

Great brainstorming sessions surface ideas that sound silly, unreasonable, and downright crazy.  Out of those ideas come the best of problem solving.

What would you add to these ways to see more?

Potential gets wasted because bringing it to full expression requires paying attention and hard work. Becoming all you can never happens on its own.

Your life, and the lives of those around you will be exponentially richer if you will be more

1. Kind and compassionate toward yourself.
2. Determined to get clear of negative emotions quicker.
3. Forgiving.
4. Curious and open to new ideas and ways of doing things.
5. Aware of yourself and your effect on others.
6. Appreciative of differences between you and others. Understand them and celebrate them.
7. Relaxed by focusing on the present moment rather than the future or the past.
8. Responsible for your own emotions and actions versus blaming or playing the victim.
9. Spiritually receptive. Take time to be still, reflect, and listen to God versus talking to him so much.
10. Careful with your body, treating it as a finely tuned, extremely valuable instrument that belongs to someone else, because it is and it does. Set a quality and quantity standard for rest, eating, exercise and health care efforts.

Rate yourself on these items on a scale of 1-10 (1 = not at all; 10 = superhero effort). Pick one or two of these items that as you grow in them, they can have a domino effect on the others.  Start paying more attention and working hard to realize more of your potential for being more in these areas.

Baby steps are good, so celebrate every one. Enlist supportive people to encourage you. If you like, let me know what you will work on.  And, if you and others around you don’t have a richer experience after 60 days, I’d like to hear from you.