July 23, 2007 by jacquie.

• Does it engage your passion?
• Do you light up when you think or talk about it?
• Do you have no or only few doubts about your ability to deliver, even when you haven’t any idea how you will go about it?

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June 14, 2007 by jacquie.

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June 5, 2007 by jacquie.

My great friend and master proofreader is visiting for the weekend. As we were discussing our plans for today (Saturday), he asked if I was writing an article so he could proofread it before he leaves on his month-long trip to Italy. My first thought was, “I don’t write on Saturday, I write on Monday.”

Hmmm. Have I let routine take possession of me? My usual schedule is to write on Monday, send it off to be proofed on Tuesday, and publish on Thursday. I like the ebb and flow of my usual schedule because when I follow it, I feel grounded. It works unless I get sick or a Monday holiday interferes. Last week, both disruptions occurred.

Unfortunately, I’m still not totally recovered. For my juggling act, I can’t seem to keep more than one ball aloft at a time. Usually, I do many things at once. You could find me reading email, printing incoming information, installing and evaluating new software and, lately, attending teleseminars on the following topics:

·         Blogging

·         Podcasting

·         Virtual book tours

·         eBook marketing

·         Teleseminars

Not only am I learning about the technical aspects of these topics, I am figuring out how to incorporate them into my current business.

What happens when a multi-tasker dissolves into a uno-tasker? Mainly,  things don’t get done. I’m surprised that I’m not nagging myself about unfinished tasks or incomplete thoughts. One reason is that all of these classes are recorded so that I can just load them onto my iPod and voila! I have a portable class room.

That’s really the beauty of all these cutting-edge technologies I’ve been studying. The fallout from all these classes is that I’ve learned first-hand that it’s not a good idea to pile on too much information. Those five topics are being taught within the same time frame, often for many hours each week. They dovetail with each other, so I took them all because I felt that all five are important. However, I am overloaded, burdened down. All this new information coming at the same time is overwhelming and I often feel sucked into a whirlpool!

Here’s what I am taking away from this experience: when giving information, give it in small portions. Learning and change happen slowly. If I want my clients to incorporate new ideas and create new habits, I must consider how much time and energy they have to assimilate what I offer. I feel relieved by this awareness because I designed one of my latest books with consideration for the readers. Serenity Is an Inside Job takes about a half hour per week for a lesson and 10 to 20 minutes a day for reflection.

Want the $10 eBook or the $20 printed book (includes shipping)?
Go to www.serenitycoach.com/book_store.htm

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May 9, 2007 by jacquie.

I’m reading the Art of Possibility by Rosamund and Benjamin Zander. Ben’s story tells how he, as a professor, used a new approach to inspire Conservatory students to be the best they can be. His idea was this: Everyone gets an A. The students were instrumentalists and singers, the class was the Art of Performance. Ben wanted to eliminate competition and anxiety so that the students would be encouraged to play full out and take risks in order to discover their own unique gifts.

The only requirement was that each student had to write a letter during the first week of class, dated for the end of the course. That letter must describe why the student deserved the A he or she was going to get. They must write the letter as if the events, inspirations, and discoveries had already happened. This is a clever way to embody the adage: Start with the end in mind.

This view of the future is a mind trick we use in teaching the Law of Attraction. If I imagine the success of my new business five years in the future, I can use that vision now to help get me overcome the doubts that creep in. Yes, doubts creep in every day! Bummer. But when I think of the future I don’t get bummed:

When so many people tell their friends about my Secret of Success teleclasses that we have to purchase more conference lines, I am grateful, fulfilled, and joyful. Our  Promise Bracelets are so popular, we’ve engaged a whole village of silversmiths in Mexico to keep our supply flowing, thus creating consistent livelihood for these artisans, promise for the buyers, and income for us to do more good work. I read the many emails that tell us how people’s lives have changed since they listened to our podcast, read our blog, or took our class! I love thinking about all the people I get to know personally, who used to be just names of authors of books on my book shelves. Now I have lunch with them and talk about the latest trend in self growth and spiritual awareness so that we can help people succeed in all aspects of their lives.
Thinking about all those things is like getting an A in my own version of the Art of Performance. I can focus on that vision or I can get caught in the whirlpool of worry about how much I’m spending or how often I haven’t succeeded.  I can listen to that voice in my head that says I’m starting too late or I’m too shy or there are so many more experienced people trying to do the same thing – or I can be inspired by the possibilities I am sure to discover as I engage my enthusiasm about what we can accomplish.

One of the promises we make in our teleseminars is that once you are committed to your goal, you will be amazed at the doors that open for you. It’s happening every week for us and we couldn’t be happier!

Have courage. Promise yourself something wonderful!

© 2007, Jacqueline Hale

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April 30, 2007 by jacquie.

There I was in my beautiful serape and sombrero, singing in Spanish. It was Show and Tell and was I showing and telling. What was this tan girl from Texas doing singing a song in Spanish on a wintery day in Ohio? My past memory included the class thinking this new girl was stuck up and unfriendly. I detected their dislike right in the middle of my song. Is it any wonder I spent the rest of the school year pretending I was sick? My mother must have been worried. I never told her how much they didn’t want me to speak a different language or wear those fancy clothes.

Imagine how I dragged that feeling with me through the next 54 years. I was always thinking: “Don’t be different, don’t stand out, don’t have something to share.” Ugh! Here I am, launching a new business and lugging along that sense of being disliked and being shunned because I dared to be proud of knowing Spanish in the fourth grade in Ohio! It’s been holding me back for years. Every time I stand to speak in front of an audience, I re-experience that shame which feels like a boulder in the pit of my stomach! As I have been preparing podcasts of my recorded voice, I’ve felt the fear and I’ve continued to prepare anyway. Wouldn’t it be great to let go of that awful feeling and step into the spotlight with a sense of appreciation?

Thoughts create feelings that determine our actions which create our results.
Have you noticed how often this has come up for me in the past few weeks? Three? Four? Five times? Those are the times you’ve read about it, but I’ve encountered it in action a lot more than just those times I wrote about it! Lucky me.

Coaching to the rescue!  Yesterday a coach from one of the groups I’ve joined called to give me a free session. Guess what we talked about! The fourth grade. This is about the millionth time I’ve talked about it, but she had a great suggestion – rewrite the story. What a great idea! As I write this, I’m following the coach’s suggestion. I’m rewriting the fourth grade story before I conduct my first teleseminar I’m leading for this new business, Promise Power™.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Fast Rewind ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here’s 10 year old, Jackie. (Back then, I spelled my name the conventional way.) I’m talking to my mom about what I could do for Show and Tell at school. “Do you think they’d like to learn that song I’m always singing in Spanish? I really love the way the words just roll around in my mouth. I bet they would too.” My mom had a great idea. “Let’s go find that serape and sombrero you wore in the school play last year – it’ll be perfect with that song.”

Funny, it snowed the day of Show and Tell. I couldn’t believe how cold it was in Ohio compared to Corpus Christi, Texas. I wrapped the serape around me while I waited for the bus. When I got to school, all the girls wanted to know about the blanket and really liked all the pretty colors. We all thought it was scratchy but very pretty anyway. The sombrero! It was really fancy with all the gold braid and stones. The girls kind of squabbled over who got to try it on. 

When it came time to sing, I felt a little nervous but I started out by telling them how all the kids in my old school had to learn Spanish because we lived so close to Mexico. It seemed hard at first but then we realized what a great thing it was because the kids could talk to each other and most of our parents didn’t know what we were talking about. It was like a secret language.  They all wanted to know a secret language.

When I said I would teach them the song, they got quiet. First, I sang it all the way through and then said, “Let’s sing the first part together.” Lucky us! Mrs. Price knew how to play the piano, so she sat right down and played along with us. By the end, the whole class could sing the song and everyone was excited. It was so popular that our homeroom performed it in the Christmas pageant – with me in front, wearing my serape and sombrero.

Now that’s a good story!

© 2007, Jacqueline Hale

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April 19, 2007 by jacquie.

I’m starting a teleseminar series this week. The information in Your Secret of Success is the same information I’ve used with my clients and other teleseminars I’ve taught in the past. I’m very familiar with it, so I was surprised that along with thoughts about the content for the upcoming class I also experienced a twinge of dread. Maybe “dread” is too strong a word. Maybe it was anxiety. It isn’t a good feeling, whatever I call it.

This is a feeling I recognize from all my work that has been in service to others. I had it whether I did massage or health consulting or coaching or training. Over the years, I began doubting myself because of this twingy feeling. When I would realize I had a client scheduled, I got a sinking feeling. When I had a client coming for health assessment, I felt a similar twinge. When the feeling  happened over and over, I thought, “Hmmm, I think this means I shouldn’t be doing this work if I so often dread doing it.” To be honest, that’s one of the reasons I stopped doing body work and health consulting. If I dreaded seeing clients there must be something wrong. All that thinking there must be something wrong made me believe that something was wrong and as a result, I became less effective.

Thoughts create feelings which determine actions which produce results.
Somehow, I’ve powered through with coaching, the feeling isn’t as strong and I’ve gotten better at centering myself. I learned to be in what I call coach mode, where I am completely involved in what my client is thinking, saying and feeling rather than in what I am experiencing.  Also, in almost all cases, at the end of the appointment, I have a very positive feeling that has allowed me to minimize the dread.

This morning, as I journalled about what I felt about the upcoming teleseminar, I came to an amazing realization. It isn’t dread I’m feeling, it’s the awesome responsibility I have to people who are my clients or students or audience. They put something of great value into my hands – themselves! And in many cases, they have paid me. Therefore it is totally appropriate for me to have feelings about what I am doing with them. I am called to respond to what they need, sometimes before they even know they need it!

Doesn’t it make perfect sense that the feeling was so much stronger when I was putting my hands on people or suggesting supplements to improve their health? In those cases, they were expecting me to take care of them. In my coaching work, I’m expecting them to take care of themselves. A good coach provides the tools for people to change their own lives. However, it’s still an awesome responsibility.

Once I recognized that my anxiety was totally appropriate, I immediately knew what to do about it. I took a deep breath, brought the feeling into my heart and made a commitment to do the best I can to guide my clients and participants to be whole, creative, and resourceful.  What a relief!

© 2007, Jacqueline Hale

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April 12, 2007 by jacquie.

Last week I got inflamed. I was angry about an injustice in my community and the fury was all consuming. A useful coaching question about nearly anything is: What did I learn? What did I learn from being inflamed about injustice?

The first thing I learned was to notice the signs of my anger. My right eyelid was twitching like crazy—a sure sign of stress for me. My neck was uncomfortably tight, my shoulders ached, and I had serious butterflies in my stomach. The symptoms involving the neck and jaw are physical signs of anger. The stomach/solar plexus reactions indicate fear. I actually felt like Vesuvius just about to spew. That’s not a pleasant feeling and far from healthy.

The next step was to articulate what was inflaming me. We had a family dinner in the midst of all the drama and as I was ranting about the situation to my daughter. My mother-in-law asked, “Just what are you so angry about?” What a great question! I took a few deep breaths and focused on the angry feeling, and soon I could clearly articulate what was inflaming me.

I’m mad at _____ because he/she is doing ____. This affects me in the following way ____.

Unfortunately, it took me a few more days to do anything about the volcano action! Eventually, I thought to ask myself: What can I do to change things? Just feeling angry wasn’t accomplishing anything but making me miserable.

I was reminded of this wonderful quote from Gandhi: Be the change you want to see in the world. In this case, the change I wanted to see was that people would cooperate with each other for the greater good of all. Taking that advice to heart, I realized that I needed to understand and cooperate with people rather than sitting around being furious and not taking action.

There’s another appropriate adage here: The only person I can change is me. Since I can’t change the person who inflamed me, my next step was to understand the dilemma from her point of view. What does she want, and why? Once I know that, I can respond rather than react. I can think about it, write about it, and talk to others about it, which widens the sphere of influence so that many people can brainstorm rather than gossip.

Can I change the course of action? Maybe I can’t, especially if the source of my discontent is outside of my sphere of influence, such as in Washington. In such cases, I feel like an ineffective scarecrow, flapping in the wind while the crows continue to eat the corn. But that’s another article for a different day.

 In this case, however, I can have some influence over the course of action. I can use my responsibility (the ability to respond) in a creative and collaborative process that honors everyone. Next, I asked:

What can I do?

Once this became a collaborative effort, I asked:

What can you do?

From that perspective we can come up with some plans which, through trial and error, can eventually support everyone involved. I feel physical and psychic relief already!

© 2007, Jacqueline Hale

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March 29, 2007 by jacquie.

A few months ago, I made a promise to myself that I would be a star! I don’t mean the Helen Mirren or Barbra Streisand kind of star. I’m using the term star symbolically. What I promised myself was that I will stand in front of people and not numb out. Here’s how I envisioned this promise:  I actually see the audience and connect with them. I feel and express my emotions. I speak as naturally as I do when I talk with a friend over iced tea. I have fluidity of movement in both body and mind.  When I got my Promise Bracelet, I put a miniature of our Promise Power™ logo inside and said that I was going to be one of the stars in that logo.

On Sunday I began to realize that promise. A few weeks ago I resigned my coordinator position with the Pacific Mozart Ensemble. I took on the volunteer job three years ago when they were about to fold up their music stands and stop performing because the logistics of running such an organization had overwhelmed their leadership.  During my tenure, I accomplished my goal of creating a volunteer  force who worked efficiently and effectively, which allowed me to resign in order to have more time to develop my own business.  There is one job the singers can’t do while they are singing, so I stayed on as the House Manager for their concerts.

Sunday was the last performance of their Spring concert. As they finished their warm-up, they called me up front to present me with several extraordinary gifts. I wasn’t expecting such an event and found myself totally unprepared. The iPod, jewelry, and gift certificate to Chez Panisse are fabulous. That’s a lot of presents, anyone of which would have sufficed as a thank you! I was overwhelmed by the generosity of this group. It was the perfect setup for me to go numb.

I was amazed to find myself feeling very real and very alive. Imagine this. I was standing on the Director’s podium and the chorus of 40, all in concert black, were standing on the risers looking down at me. There I was crying – I was actually crying, a rarity for me. There I was, crying and at the same time saying how much that group means to me, and I saw them looking back at me. I really saw them! I saw their shining faces sending me acknowledgement, appreciation, and love. I’ve gotta tell you, that image will get me through any tough spot I encounter in the future. Remembering those faces and the outpouring of emotion will be my source of strength and courage. I can’t thank them enough for caring so much that they broke through the cement wall that I’ve been hiding behind for 63 years!

That’s a promise kept, a dream come true!

©2007, Jacqueline Hale

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March 22, 2007 by jacquie.

Finally, I have my Promise Bracelet. It’s been a long time coming. It’s been eight  months since Elaine told me her idea and we decided to go on this adventure together. Talk about delayed gratification! Last week, I got my own bracelet. Elaine had the first prototype created a few months ago, and now we have 30 prototypes – 29 when we subtract mine!
I see at least two lessons from this process. The first is patience. The waiting wasn’t very hard because I had such a clear image of what we were going for. Once we decided on a design, it was easy for me to wait for it to come to fruition, especially after I saw the prototype Elaine wore. It was beautiful, and it already was alive in my imagination.
The second lesson is keeping the dream alive all those months. That’s where our partnership comes in. If I didn’t have Elaine, I’m afraid this idea would have gone the way of many others. I have tons of ideas. I wake up with ideas and get out of bed to write them down. My many ideas distract me from completing most of them. The partnership has kept me on track!
Elaine and I talk on the phone at least once a week; sometimes we talk every day. She lives over 100 miles away, but she comes to the San Francisco Bay area frequently and we often meet at a cantina near the freeway to exchange ideas and stories. (The tostadas are good, too!) This partnership has kept us focused on the business at hand for Promise Power. Elaine is the business and marketing wizard who has also designed and dealt with the manufacture of the bracelets. I create the books and programs that support the people who buy a bracelet and want to make a promise that will change their lives and/or make a difference in the world. It’s such a valuable goal that we’ve spent significant money and hours making sure that our promise succeeds!
Inside my promise bracelet I’ve placed the logo of our partnership. It reminds me that I have promised to make Promise Power successful and to be one of the shining stars of this organization.

© 2007, Jacqueline Hale

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March 15, 2007 by jacquie.

I’m considering stories to add to my latest book. Two of my favorite Law of Attraction stories involve my daughter. After Penny finished college, she set out to find a great place to live in Berkeley, California. In this university town, finding any place seemed impossible. One of my friends spent a year looking. People subscribed to rental agents and had to phone within minutes after a listing was posted to find apartments that were often dumps.

Penny had already lived in a so-so apartment; she was ready for something nicer. She found an ad for a “charming cottage” but “no dogs.” Bummer. She had Zoey, her fabulous pit bull-boxer mix—a sweetheart of a dog. She proceeded because the cottage was exactly what she wanted: a stand-alone gem with a fireplace, a garden, and a fenced in yard.

When Penny went to see the house, she took Zoey along and invited the potential landlady to meet her dog; somehow she was sure this woman who said “no dogs” was going to love her dog! Penny’s application was one of 100 would-be tenants’ applications to be reviewed over the next two days.

When Penny told me about this wonderful little house, I suggested that she imagine herself in the house. This was long before I knew anything about the law of attraction, it was just a natural thing for me. Since Penny was a nut for Christmas, I suggested that Penny imagine her Christmas tree in the house and also dream about a party in the back yard. She got the cottage. She and Zoey spent several years living happily ever after. That is, until the day the landlady said her sister was moving into the cottage and Penny had to move out.

Before I tell  my second story, I want to review how Penny used the law of attraction to get that cottage. First of all, she was clear about what she wanted. She took action to enroll in Homefinders and to be one of the first to see the place. She also presented her dog secure in the knowledge that the landlady would love Zoey (or at least accept her). Then Penny’s envisioning living in the cottage really lit her up. She took some final action by calling the landlady before the end of the application period to tell her one more time about how much she wanted to live in the cottage and how she planned to garden and take care of the place. Taking action is a major part of the law of attraction.

The second story starts where the first left off. At that time, I was studying with Robert Kirosaki and decided to explore the real estate market. My idea was to buy a house and rent it to Penny. She and I set off one drizzly Sunday and saw some mighty iffy houses. However, the last one on our list was better than Penny’s wonderful cottage. This was in the heyday of the housing market when sellers got many offers for thousands of dollars more than they were asking.

After we saw all the mother and daughter photos in the house, we told the owner/real estate agent our mother-daughter plan. She was so enchanted with what we were doing, she made a few suggestions such as having Penny buy the house rather than me because as a first time buyer, she could qualify for the loan faster.

During the waiting period, Penny did a fabulous job of envisioning living in that house, once again imagining her Christmas tree. She even drew the footprint of the house and positioned all her furniture. From our first sight, we had a definite feeling that Penny would soon own that little house, and she does. She lives there now—with her husband and her second dog, Kirby. The Law of Attraction works.   

© 2007, Jacqueline Hale

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