Update from There Is Urgency... Event last Thursday, 7/16

We had a great session last Thursday evening. We dealt with some interesting perspectives on the topic of urgency. Judging by the level of note taking, and great feedback, most participants were provoked into thinking about what they have dreamed to achieve, but done nothing to make real.

Let me ask you a question? How many of you could say the same thing? Be honest! How many big dreams have you thought about, but because of the economy, your finances, your family, health, your job, where you live, etc... you've put off until "someday"? If this is you, you've got been infected with mind viruses and have contracted something I call "Excuseitis".

Did you know that "someday" means "never"? The reason this is true is because your days are numbered - whether you know it or not! From the base year of your birth, add 100, and it's a pretty safe bet that by that year you will have moved on to the life that follows physical death. There is urgency...

You see, Goal Achievement requires leadership, leadership of your Mind and Body. (self-leadership). YOU are made up of three divisions:

1. Soul (I call this the "I" in You - the spiritual You that is in direct connection with the spirit of truth - God)
2. Mind (or brain)
3. Body (the physical you)

The Soul (the "I") in YOU has the responsibility to lead, to set the objectives, the goals and the dates by which the goals must be achieved. The "I" doesn't need to concern itself with how the goal will be achieved, only "what" is to be achieved and by when. It is up to the "Mind" to figure out the how (create the plan) and then direct the "Body" to get to work achieving the goal (see illustration below) That's it!


Simple, right? Wrong... If it were this simple, everyone would simply set and achieve their goals, and that would be that! The problem is the "I" fails to lead, because leadership is too hard. When this happens, the Mind is left to its own devices to direct the body however it feels. If it feels good do it, avoid discomfort at all cost! And since there is no oversight, or accountability form the "I", everything just drifts. Before you know it, your time is up and the curtain falls - you die with your goals unrealized. But it doesn't have to be this way. Next Thursday evening, 7/23 at 6:30pm, we're going to discuss how to overcome this lack of leadership to put your Soul back in control of the Mind and Body, to provide the leadership necessary to achieve your worth while life-transforming goals! You don't want to miss this event.

To register for - "What's Next?", go to http://www.meetup.com/Goal-Achievers-Knowledge-Expansion-Group/ This event will include a webinar feed so if you can't be there in person, you can still participate online with your computer, a high speed Internet connection, and a phone (we use GoToMeeting). Both online and webinar seats are limited, so register now to secure your seat!

And remember...

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back -- Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now. Engage, then the mind grows heated. Begin it, and the work will be completed." - Margaret Mead

Cheers,

Mark J.
Life Transformation Coach, Motivational Speaker, Author
Creator of the Boxes Life Transformation System and Coaching Program
hf Impact, llc.
www.getoutofyourbox.com
877.800.7273, x4

"If you want something you've never had, you must get out of your box to create it!"

You're Invited to "There is Urgency..." Thurs. eve, 7/16!

The Goal Achiever Knowledge Expansion Session seminar series is resuming Thursday night, July 16th at 6:30pm near Santana Row in San Jose (scroll down to see event details below), and again Thursday, July 23rd at 6:30pm! As a reader of my blog you are invited to participate free of charge. If you plan to attend simply send an email to mark@hfimpact.com. This event is going to be very empowering!

In addition to your complimentary attendance, any guest that attends with you is also complimentary! However, we do need you to pre-register your guests by including their name and email address in the note confirming your participation. Again, send that note to mark@hfimpact.com. This will help us manage capacity because seating is limited and available on a first come, first served basis.

The event this Thursday evening is going to be really good so I hope you can make it out. This Thursday’s discussion will introduce some new insights and tools that will help explode any excuses that stand in the way of your decision making to set and achieve goals that capitalize on the economic recovery that is starting to take shape through goal setting and achievement. There is urgency…

Never in our lifetime has there been a better window of opportunity to “break out of the box” and begin creating the future life we desire. The urgency is associated with one simple truth, your time is limited.

You see, if you add 100 to your birth year, you can find the date on the calendar by which it is 99% likely that you will no longer be alive, and by subtracting 35 from that year, you can easily find your retirement year. This means that if you have a “someday” goal you need to define a real date within today and your retirement year by which you will accomplish it, otherwise you will end your life with it unrealized. You really don’t want to miss out on this… So, confirm your seat now!

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Event#1: Knowledge Expansion Session - There is Urgency... (90 minutes)
Date and Time: Thursday, July 16th, 6:30pm - San Jose, CA
Location: 560 Winchester Blvd at I280, Suite 500, San Jose, CA

DESCRIPTION: There has never been a better time than now to get focused on creating the future you desire to live, yes, regardless of what the media says about how bad the present economic situation is. To find out why, register and attend this 90 minute knowledge expansion event which is certain to wake you up to the immediacy of your need to think big, plan your course, and begin acting right where you are, to create the future you desire.

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Event #2: Knowledge Expansion Session - What's Next? - (90 mins)
Date and Time: July 23, 2009, 6:30pm 8:00pm
Location: 560 Winchester Blvd at I280, Suite 500, San Jose, CA

DESCRIPTION: After you understand there is urgency and why, what do you do next? What obstacles stand in the way of your ability to create your dream life? What can you do to overcome them? To find out, register and attend this 90 minute knowledge expansion session. We are certain you will be glad you did!

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"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectivness -- Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now. Engage, then the mind grows heated. Begin it, and the work will be completed." - Margaret Mead

Part Two of "Getting Where You Want To Go In Life"

The following post is from the client described in my post of June 26th - "Getting Where You Want To Go In Life"...

"Last week, during ny coaching session with Mark, he asked how I was proceeding toward accomplishing my #1 goal, that’s changing my job and moving to Austin TX with a job offer in hand on or before July 15th, 2009 (a specific date on the calendar). I had made all possible connections remotely by identifying and applying for number of jobs. But nothing concrete had yet happened to encourage me on this front. I told Mark that I was making progress, but it looked like I might have to move the date out because I was being told that the job market in Austin was very slow. At that point, Mark asked me a question – was I going to give up on the date (and effectively, my goal), or was I willing to change the “method” while keeping my “intention” intact. My intention is to take up a new job by 07/15, and move to Austin. As Mark teaches, Result (100%) = Intention (99%) + Method (1%).

Then Mark told me that the reason I was willing to give up on my my goal was because I was not really committed to my intention to achieve it by the date I had set. In fact, as it turns out, I was more committed to my method which was worth only 1% of my goal! Then Mark challenged me. He said that if I was really committed to my goal to take a job in Austin by July 15th (a goal is a specific, measurable objective, achieved by a specific date on the calendar, and according to Mark, “someday” is not a specific date) I would change my method,taking the following actions in the sequence listed…

1. Book a round trip airline ticket to Austin for next week.
2. Book a hotel reservation for my stay.
3. Book a rental car for use during your visit.
4. Get on the phone and set up appointments with my contacts in Austin during my trip to interview for a position there.

Mark said that by doing this I would put skin in the game, demonstrating to myself that I was serious about my intention to achieve my goal by the date I set, that I would align my actions with the fact that there was urgency… It made sense, so the next day I booked a round trip flight, hotel, and car for the following week (the week of June 28th). I also decided to take next whole week off from work to invest my time in creating my future!

Sunday (06/28) morning I flew from to Austin. During the flight I was just thinking what to do next two days, whom to meet, how to ask for help etc… When I reached Austin it was 4pm. It was a pretty hot day (temp at lower 100s). It was a strange feeling when I landed at Austin, a new city, nobody I know of, lots of things to do for next couple of days, meeting strangers etc… But I was excited to come out of my box to invest in my future!!!

After renting a car, I headed straight to my hotel to dump my luggage, then drive around Austin, especially to visit the Dell campus at Round Rock – this is where I want to go to work. After driving around Round Rock and having dinner I came back to the hotel and started working on next day’s action items:

1. Meeting confirmation with Manpower recruiter
2. Confirmed next day’s meeting with Sandu (college professor)
3. Hunt for other recruiters online
4. Call with Burnett / Sapphire / MCI staffing
5. Talked to friend at Dell for a meeting on Monday, he was busy for Monday, planned to meet him on Tuesday for a coffee.

Monday (06/29)

Met Manpower recruiter – VJ, very friendly person, willing to help even personally! Manpower provides staffing to Dell, IBM, and other prominent players in Austin. VJ is actively working on my case; he did not have any immediate openings in PM area. He provided me his home address to take a look at the neighborhood, invited me to visit his home for a coffee. According to him, IT opportunities are more in Dallas and Houston compared to Austin. Did he sound negative? No, he must be right in terms of the number of opportunities – it is his job to know this - but I need just one opportunity to get to Austin, and I am confident of coming across the right job for me soon. I thought, it’s so easy to meet people and network, I just need to focus on finding people who can help me in getting to Austin! I was all excited to meet people after this meeting, it is easy!!

Good, I got an address to drive around neighborhoods that I might want to live in! So I started driving to VJ’s neighborhood. It was little outside of Austin, a place called Pflugerville, a nice quiet place away from city traffic/population. Right away I thought “definitely I wouldn’t live in such neighborhood”, You know why? I could not find even a single person in the neighborhood, it all looked deserted!

So, I had a plan to meet my professor (Sandu) at 4pm at his office. He was not that close to me while I was studying, but he was one of my favorite instructors in my engineering program, a nice person, good at teaching and making the student comfortable with the subject. A little shy in nature, but excited to see me at his office. He was excited to show me scenic Austin through the 360 loop. Austin is beautiful indeed, it is green and warm, plain land on one side, hilly region on the other side. The Colorado river takes quite a number of turns through Austin!

So Sandu was excited to talk about Austin, comparing that with Silicon Valley in terms of greenery and natural beauty, of course I agree with him. He seemed almost obsessed with Austin, and for good reason it turns out! He bought a house in Austin in a good neighborhood couple of years back. He said it’s a small house, just 2700 sqft in size. When he said this I thought “2700 sqft living area in bay area is like living in a mansion!!” The cost of the house was $250K!! Ridiculously low isn’t it! The same house in Silicon Valley would cost anywhere between $800k and $1.2m. So the thought occurred to me that should just book one house right there and then! Should I? Why not? That would be full commitment!

We spent about 2 hours talking about Austin, Bay Area, people from our college etc… nothing much more he could help me on my mission, he is not that well connected on IT front, he works in video compression technology with a start up. I left him at his office after coffee, promising to meet him at his place the next day. Sandu gave me all positive details about Austin, which is pretty encouraging stuff for my mission!!

So it was time for me to check emails from the recruiters I contacted in last few days, also I was waiting for couple of meeting confirmation for tomorrow. I came back to hotel and started working on finding contacts, companies and recruiters. Meanwhile during the day I had tried setting up meetings with couple of recruiters but response was not that positive (noise), they asked me to send resume so that they would take a look before planning for a meet. They did not sound positive on meeting me. I was not discouraged seeing no face-to-face meetings being setup for next day, because I thought, “let’s use a different method to meet these folks”.

As per my plan I was left with just one more day in Austin. I had booked my flight back for Wednesday morning. So, I decided, let me identify the people / companies I have to meet on Tuesday, sort them by area (close to each other) and start visiting them one-by-one. Also I called up my college-mate at Dell to fix up a time to met him next day, he was ok for meeting for a coffee.

My plan was to meet the following folks:

1. HCI International
2. Sapphire – Jay H.
3. Spherion
4. Burnett Staffing
5. Jim Smith (my friend) at Dell
6. HP
7. CISCO
8. Sun Microsystem

Tuesday (06/30)

As I said above, I had decided to meet people personally and explore the opportunites, so I started the day by driving to Sapphire and asking for Jay H., who is the technical recruiter. At the reception just I asked for Jay, next moment I was in a meeting room with Jay discussing about California, weather etc. He was very positive to work out an opportunity for me in Austin in next couple of weeks! He was impressed with my resume and he said there are number of projects starting/started at AMD / Charles Schwab / The Foundry etc. I need a regular follow up with Jay on these opportunities. It was so easy to meet Jay; I just walked in, without prior meeting setup!! I thought, this is outstanding!

Spherion was next to Sapphire suite, in the same building, just I walked in to Spherion asking for recruiting / HR manager. Nobody was available at that time, so just I dropped in my resume at receptionist. I will be following up on the opportunities here with recruiting manager.

HCI international is a career management firm that helps candidate to identify right career and opportunity, and helps you to get that opportunity. I wanted to meet one of their managers who can help me at Austin. Ashley (admin) said her VP is busy for Tuesday, so she can setup a meeting for later that week, but I could not stay back that long, I had to head back on Wednesday.

The other staffing firm I wanted to have connection was Burnett Staffing. I had made connections with a technical recruiter at Burnett (Deborah Nichols). She was busy for whole that week, so I asked if we could setup a call to discuss my requirements. She has agreed to have a call on next Wednesday (07/08) to take my case forward.
Next in my list was to meet Jim, my friend from college who is working at Dell. I had never had any personal contact with him after college. I got reconnected with him via LinkedIn a few days back while exploring opportunities in Austin.

We met that day at 2pm for a coffee, he was straight to the point on my requirements, what I looking for, how is Dell structured, where he can help me etc. Also, he mentioned that he would be quitting Dell in next 2 weeks as he has accepted an offer from a firm in Hong Kong!! So he has asked me to identify the PM openings at Dell that’s suitable to my profile and send him the job#, he would be able to connect me with respective recruiting manager at Dell. So, I have sent him few openings I found at Dell.com and have asked him to introduce me to Dell managers. I will be following up with him again early next week.

Also, while researching Austin, I found CISCO, Sun Microsystems and HP have operations at Austin. So I thought, I should visit these companies and meet their HR/Recruiting managers. Unfortunately, these companies did not have recruiting managers located at those offices, the only way they accept the applications is through their online job portal, so nothing much positive happened at these companies. But, there is a positive thing that happened! I came out of my box and visited these offices, walked straight into reception, asking for technical recruiting managers!! This was a big deal for me!!!

Now, I was exhausted with my visit list, so just headed back to hotel to check internet/email to see if anybody else has responded on my resume. But nobody had responded. I was flexible to change my return date based on any new responses from recruiters / companies, but nothing much happened that encouraged me to change my travel plans.

So, after 2 hectic days of meeting people and companies, I decided to treat myself to a drive around Austin, specifically 360 loop and a visit to Colorado river and reservoir built on this river. Tuesday was just perfect with temperature being at lower 90s, it had rained that morning; the warm weather was just perfect for me!! It just reminded of my birthplace, where 365 days are warm just like that!!! So I just felt like homecoming!!!!

While I was that location Mark called me up for checking on my mission. He asked me to feel my physical presence in Austin at that moment, stressing how it would help me in achieving my goal of moving to Austin. He asked me to plant a coin or something of my possession at Austin that would help me in connecting myself with the city, and to get some soil from Austin as a token to bring back, which is physical stuff that will remind me of the mission I took to create my future in that city!!

That night, while I was packing my luggage for early morning flight next day, I started thinking whether I accomplished my mission. I took a huge step towards achieving my main vocational goal of moving to Austin, I met quite a number of people here who all are now helping me in achieving my goal. And connected myself with Austin by planting few coins and bringing some sand from my future city!!!

Now, after my visit to Austin, my intention to move to that city is stronger than ever! I am confident that something positive will happen very soon that would help me in achieving my #1 goal!!! I have made a number of connections in Austin now, and I am working on making more connections that will lead to the landing of the job I seek there… I believe, strongly believe I can achieve this goal very soon, my deadline is 07/15, very much closer than I thought!! But as always, Mark says just believe it’s going to happen, focus on your intention, you will find a way to achieve your goal – because Intention (99%)+ Method (1%) = Result (100%), and if I hold on to my intention by date. In fact, I already possess 99% of my goal right now! After this trip, my intention of moving to Austin is stronger than ever before, so the method doesn’t matter to me, I am going to achieve my goal!!!!

Follow-up action plan... details removed for privacy…"