This issue is made up of the following sections:

1. Personal Effectiveness Tips
2. What Not to Do to Impress Clients
3. Reality Check - Wake Up Time

1. Personal Effectiveness Tips
1. No one can intimidate you without your permission. Stop operating in your everyday life as if everybody around you knows more than you, is more confident than you, and has got everything figured out already. They are more than likely walking around thinking the same thing themselves.

2. The more you can take being right and wrong out of the equation in your relationships, the better those relationships will be. Sports are a classic example of a zero-sum game (I win-you lose). Relationships aren't. They can be win-win. Changing your paradigm in this manner can result in dramatic increases in quality of interactions in your relationships.

3. Remember that each new situation is also an opportunity to:
   1. Learn something
   2. Take a calculated risk
   3. Gain knowledge, experience, etc

   If you approach every new opportunity in this manner, you'll learn more than you ever thought, and become adept at taking risks that may catapult you away from the staleness and inactivity of everyday life.

4. Realize that the conventional wisdom is usually conventionally dumb. People walk around all the time making remarks like, "She wants to have her cake and eat it too" and "Well, just remember: No pain, no gain." The former statement should read, "She wants to eat her cake AND have it, too," which makes more sense, and the latter is simply not true. Not everything we seek has pain attached as a cost. If you want to rise above the crowd, question conventional wisdom at every turn, and make your own decisions about what rings true and what sounds like uneducated babble from the masses.

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2. What Not to Do to Impress Clients

I spent an evening this past month seeing private clients, and as I was driving to my office I decided to visit the local Starbucks for a hot cup of black coffee. Figuring that it would take at least a half hour to cool down to the point that I could drink it, I began my first session with a client and sat down for an hour discussion.

Half way through this session, I began sipping the coffee, being careful to sip it slowly, without spilling, as I tend to do. I did a great job slowly sipping the coffee while attending to the discussion at hand, and later saw my client off and wished her well.

Prior to the next client's arrival, I decided to visit the men's room to wash my hands. It was while I was washing my hands that I noticed that I had a dark blotch the size of a football on my chest, with a line down to my pant buckle to boot. Apparently I had been slowly dripping coffee on my salmon colored shirt the entire session. My client had undoubtedly noticed and had said nothing, content to watch my act unfold slowly over the course of the hour.

As I was blotting my shirt with water (imagining the response and amazed look on my wife's face when I returned home) in a frantic attempt at saving some dignity, I realized that my front pant zipper was agape, and had been the past hour with my client.

As I was walking back to my office to see my next three clients (with a huge Rorchach test on my chest) I wondered to myself whether my client would return for next session after watching me work my magic...

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3. Reality Check - Wake Up Time

Tom Petty is one of my favorite rock musicians. One of his best songs, in my opinion, is titled, "Wake Up Time" (1994), and provides for the perfect teaching tool on lessons about life.

"You follow your feelings, you follow your dreams You follow the leader into the trees And what's in there waiting, neither one of us knows You gotta keep one eye open the further you go"

The beginning of the song discusses the typical path that we take in life: Having a gut feeling, going after a dream, and attempting to have faith that things will work out. "You spend your life dreaming, running 'round in a trance You hang out forever and still miss the dance"

Most of us, I believe, can sympathize with these song lyrics. We all have had dreams that we never made plans for, never took action on. The feelings that accompany these events (guilt, angst, frustration, etc) are incredibly important emotional markers and action signals in our lives, because they are our bodies' way of telling us that we are cheating ourselves.

"...And if you follow your feelings And you follow your dreams You might find the forest there in the trees.."

What this means is that the choice is simple: Either you give up on your dreams altogether, or you stick with it over time and do what is necessary to see the dream become a reality. It may happen later than you originally planned, and it may be via a different path than you originally envisioned, but the end result will be there if you are willing to work for it.

"And it's wake up time Time to open your eyes... And rise... and shine"The lesson here, in one three minute song, is that life isn't stopping for any of us. Last I checked, the world went on without me when I went to bed, or had a sick day. Nobody has ever knocked on my door and presented me with any secrets to success, and I'm betting that the same can be said for your life. If you want to live, you need to do so intentionally. The simplified formula for attainment of any goal in life is as follows:

1. Have a specific plan for how you want your life to turn out
2. Have varied ways to make that plan come true
3. Anticipate problems. They always appear on the scene.
4. Take complete responsibility for your responses to life's ups and downs
5. Work hard, and work smart.
6. Know what success is prior to attaining it
7. Celebrate your victories

Every time I hear this song, I feel inspired to live my life a little bit better than I did yesterday. When I live my life as if tomorrow is not promised, I always feel more aware, more alive, and more human. I also feel less afraid, and more willing to tackle life's problems and pursue that which makes me happy.

It's time to wake up, folks. When are you finally going to start living your life as you originally imagined it?

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