Contents:

- A Note from The Coach

- All Work and No Play, a Prescription for Personal Disaster    

-Feature Article: Playing Full Out

-Feature Article: Getting Out Of The Way

Please add "ezine@MyCoachJason.com" to your whitelist or address book in your e-mail program, so that you have no trouble receiving future issues!

At first glance at the titles of the three articles in this
ezine, it might seem that there is a bit of a contridiction in
my messages. The first article is a warning about becoming a
workaholic by devoting way too much time to your business game,
while the second article encourage you to play whatever game you
are playing, totally, 100% full-out and the third article
teaches techniques to make playing full-out way easier.
Actually, there is no contridiction if it is understood that all
endevours in business and in life can be designed as winnable
games worth playing. The first article is mearly warning about
the grave downsides that result from an out of balance life that
consentrates mainly on the business game.

I decided to put these three articles together because together
they are a great perscription for a balanced and wonderful life.
The first one is about balance. The second describes what the
results are when playing any of life's games with total gusto.
And the third, describes how to optimize your performance while
you are playing full-out and that is the best way I know to
insure winning.

Return to top

All Work and No Play, a Prescription for Personal Disaster    

Recently in a workshop, I was reminded of the consequences of
all work and little play, a rut that people who work for
themselves too easily fall into, especially for those of us who
work out of our homes. Being cognizant of when we are "at work"
and when we are "off duty" is very important. People who are
always working and putting in double shifts are very likely to
become underproductive. [In some ways this is a corollary of the
law of diminishing returns.] That seems counter-intuitive,
especially to the workaholic (as I used to be) who is doing
this. The truth is that as the hours increase, the effectiveness
of the work output and the ability to concentrate diminishes.
When this is an ongoing way of life, an increasing deficit of
rest and sleep will start to affect the quality of even early in
the day output which will trigger a desire to work even more to
cover for it.

Fortunately, we have a built-in mechanism to alert us to when we
are getting to obsessed in work. We have an inner personality
that yearns for balance. The more work we do in a day, the more
our inner being resents the psychic and physical intrusion on
its need for the 3Rs, rest, relaxation and recreation. When the
inner being gets resentful of this intrusion, it reacts subtly,
or not so subtly, by producing behaviors to get the conscious
being to recognize the imbalance. If the conscious being does
not recognize these wake-up calls, these behaviors will keep
escalating in severity, from procrastination and mild depression
to mild and then severe sickness. Initially, these attempts to
get the person to take time to rejuvenate the inner battery
might manifest themselves as getting ultra-tired at earlier and
earlier times, and then as an increasing inability to get one's
self out of bed. If these are misinterpreted (by the person and
the medical profession) as merely being a bit depressed, it
might occasion a misguided hunt for the best chemical cures such
as anti-depressants or stimulants, all of which would miss the
point. If the person took those remedies and kept the 14-16
hours a day schedule, the inner being would continue to escalate
its effort to force the person to add some of the 3Rs to the
diet.

The force of the inner personality is not to be taken lightly.
It will eventually destroy the person in an effort to satisfy
its intention. In this case, when it found that attempting to do
it through depression, procrastination and exhaustion were not
working, the next level of attempts could easily be physical
ones, usually in the form of illness. It would be operating
under the of principle of, "if I can't get this fools attention,
I will just physically disable him/her into taking some time
off." These physical disablement attempts will continue to
escalate up to and including cancer and death!

The moral of this tale is to pay attention to the early signs
that maybe we are over doing the work stuff and it is way out of
balance with the need for the 3Rs (rest, relaxation and
recreation). Even better than that is paying attention to the
way we plan our days and weeks, as well as life itself, to make
sure that there is a healthy mix of hard work and equally strong
doses of rest and play. Also, paying attention to getting
adequate nutrition would complete the prescription for a
healthy, happy, and abundant life.

©2007, Jason Wittman

Would you like to reprint this article? You can, as long as you
publish the entire article and include this complete blurb with
it: "Life Coach Jason Wittman publishes "My Coach Jason's Tips
for Winning at Life" monthly ezine. If you're ready to
jump-start your life, you can find more FREE tips, FREE
subscription information, and how you can benefit by his
coaching at http://MyCoachJason.com "

Return to top

Playing Full Out                    

I woke up this morning to the sounds of the same mockingbirds
that I listening to when I was falling asleep the night before.
Actually I ought to be more specific, it was one mockingbird
that was singing, and who will keep singing until he mates and
gets satisfied. Now that is playing full out! Talk about having
100% enthusiasm and 100% commitment to what you are doing in the
moment! This was precisely what the late David Goodstein,
philanthropist, very successful magazine publisher, and
humanitarian, prescribed as the formula for a happy and
enjoyable life. David said that if whatever you are doing, you
do with 100% enthusiasm and 100% commitment, it will always be
enjoyable. This is an amazingly simple and profound concept.
Most of the unhappy experiences in life come from being way less
than 100% into doing the experience and way more than zero
percent into analyzing, commenting and grumbling about it while
doing it. The first time I heard him talk about this, I couldn’t
wait until the next time I had sex. I realized that I was never
100% immersed in the action. At least 25% (and many times much
more) of me was hovering somewhere up near the ceiling and being
very concerned about how well I was performing and what my
partner was thinking about my performance. I couldn’t wait to
apply this concept because I knew that it would greatly improve
my enjoyment. As it turned out, I was wrong. It didn’t greatly
improve my experience; it transformed this heretofore
semi-enjoyable, semi-obligatory performance into a mind blowing
experience! It’s amazing what results from being totally
involved in what one is doing!

I started to apply this concept of being 100% enthusiastic and
100% committed to whatever I was doing at every moment of my
life, and it has transformed my experience of my life. When I am
listening to the mockingbird, I am REALLY listening to the
mockingbird. When I am listening to a client I am coaching, I am
REALLY listening. At that moment, nothing else matters. What my
son is doing at the other end of the house, what I am going to
have for lunch, and for that matter, which song in its vast
repertoire the mockingbird is singing are not even in my mind.
My 100% commitment, enthusiasm and attention is in the dialogue
I am having with my client. No matter what the content of that
dialogue, it is always fun and a hugely enjoyable experience. In
my years of working as a social worker with street kids, I have
participated in more than my share of heavy drama; racing to
emergency rooms with half alive kids, stepping in between
hostile kids with guns, and the like. Looking strictly at my
personal experience of those events, I thoroughly enjoyed what I
was doing and it was fun. That is not to say that I didn’t have
heavy emotions about what was going on. I did, but usually after
the action was over. Because I was 100% into doing what I was
doing as I was doing it with total commitment and enthusiasm, I
was having great fun and enjoyment and I was at the top of my
game. Playing full-out with 100% enthusiasm and 100% commitment
is how one gets to the top of one’s game. Being at the top of
one’s game as is being played full-out with 100% commitment and
100% enthusiasm is always fun!

©2007, Jason Wittman

Would you like to reprint this article? You can, as long as you
publish the entire article and include this complete blurb with
it: "Life Coach Jason Wittman publishes "My Coach Jason's Tips
for Winning at Life" monthly ezine. If you're ready to
jump-start your life, you can find more FREE tips, FREE
subscription information, and how you can benefit by his
coaching at http://MyCoachJason.com "

Return to top

Getting Out Of The Way   

Today when I was taking a shower, I just let my voice go where
it wanted to go and it came out with one of the most perfectly
lovely of melodies, totally freeform and inventive. There was
not one note that was out of place or off key. It was just
beautiful. This got me thinking that this is a perfect example
of getting out of the way.

Everything of beauty, every bit of true thought, all of the
creative energies of the human potential are unleashed when one
gets out of the way. The question is how does one create an
ability to get out of the way at will? There are many ways of
cultivating that ability. The spiritual understanding is there
is a God-force or for those uncomfortable with the "G" word, a
"greater source of wisdom and knowledge." If that force is
allowed to flow through our unconscious mind and out through the
mouth or the fingers or the body action, it will produce perfect
thought and action. Of course there is no proof that such a
source exists. It is a very useful construct though. The mind
works well when fed such useful constructs. The real question,
though, is once that construct is adopted, how does one go about
doing it. Just how do you "get out of the way?"

A more basic question might be, just what has to be gotten out
of the way to allow this pure thought and action to flow? The
"what" is the conscious mind. When it is out of the way, the
“what” that gets to use that pure thought and action is the
unconscious mind. The unconscious mind (or the inner mind) is in
charge of all those things that we do automatically. It keeps us
from bumping into things when we are walking. It keeps us in
lane and guides us around road hazards that suddenly appear in
front of us on the freeway, long before the conscious mind
realizes they’re there. Incidentally, that is a good example of
a situation where the conscious mind in out of the way and the
unconscious mind delivers. I have been in near accidents at high
speeds on California's freeways and what made them "near"
accidents, instead of catastrophes was that my unconscious mind
did what it needed to do to guide my hands to steer through the
chaos. My conscious mind caught up to what had just happened two
miles later!

In the realm of mind things, the conscious mind is a minor
player and mostly is a performance inhibitor. It is the part
that says, "What should I do next?" and "If I was to do that,
what would people say?" It also provides bits of useful
information like reminding us that the next freeway exit is ours
and that our fly is unzipped. It also can be a huge negative
player when it is questioning one's abilities and especially
when it wants to direct what needs to be an unconscious process.
A good example is the process of learning an instrument or
learning to type. The conscious mind wants to make sure that it
is being done right, so it takes charge of where the fingers
should be placed. The problem is that the conscious mind will
never be able to think fast enough for the fingers to be able to
achieve proficiency. Proficiency can only happen when it is
directed by the unconscious mind. Comparing the computational
speeds of the conscious vs. the unconscious would be like
comparing half the speed of sound to four times the speed of
light. That is why the conscious mind needs to get out of the
way.

So how can one purposefully learn to get out of the way? Here
are some of the ways I do it:

1. Someone in New York City once asked for directions to
Carnegie Hall, one of the major concert venues of the time, by
asking, 'How do you get to Carnegie Hall? The answer he got back
was, "Practice! Practice! Practice!" Although not too useful to
find the place, it is quite useful to get to the point where the
conscious mind feels it can relinquish control and get totally
out of the way and allow the musical abilities to flow out at a
concert hall level of expertise. Whether it is playing an
instrument, playing sports, doing crossword puzzles, singing,
public speaking and acting or a verbally proficient helping
professional like a life coach, practicing to the point where
the skill becomes an automatic unconscious process is an
essential first step.

2. Even with lots of practice and even after the skills are
almost automatic, sometimes the expected expert performance does
not happen. This is usually due to the conscious mind getting in
the way. If you ever learned to type you have had this
experience. There is a point where your fingers know what keys
to press to produce the right result but you are still looking
at your fingers because you consciously want to make sure they
really know where to press. Once you resisted all temptation to
look and you type a passage flawlessly and repeat that a number
of times, the conscious mind will be convinced and stop
monitoring. Only then will your typing speed make dramatic
increases.

3. There are times when the conscious mind refuses to stop its
monitoring and controlling functions and sometimes even produces
negative behaviors to sabotage the whole effort. What can be
done to get it to cooperate or to do an end play around it?
These problems are usually caused by “inner game” issues. There
is some part of the inner personality that has serious
reservations with the course of action that the person is
undertaking and is slowing down or stopping the process in an
effort to protect the person. My assumption when talking about
this process is to understand that all actions of this nature by
the inner personality are done with positive intention and never
with malevolence. Unfortunately, sometimes the behaviors that
are chosen to carry out that intention can be pretty lousy.

So if you are doing everything you can with the first two
suggestions and still come up with inner game impedances like
anxiety, stage fright, procrastination, or a hesitancy to play
full-out, the first course to deal with them would be to use the
self-help techniques of creative visualization and
self-hypnosis. If all the tools you have are not working, then
it is probably time to call on the services of a professional to
guide you through the process. Those professionals that are most
qualified to do this are coaches who also have Neuro-Linguistic
Programming and, even better, hypnotherapy skills. With that
assistance, you will be on your way to mastery.

Would you like to reprint this article? You can, as long as you
publish the entire article and include this complete blurb with
it: "Life Coach Jason Wittman publishes "My Coach Jason's Tips
for Winning at Life" monthly ezine. If you're ready to
jump-start your life, you can find more FREE tips, FREE
subscription information, and how you can benefit by his
coaching at http://MyCoachJason.com "

Return to top

The Playing Life Full-Out Roundtable!
A New Weekly Tele-gathering

Every Thursday, March 1, 2007
Time: 4:00pm Pacific (5pm Mountain,
6pm Central ,7pm Eastern)

Please join me for this on-going free roundtable that will focus
primarily on the areas of Inner Game issues of getting certainty
and confidence in one's abilities to play full-out in both
business and life. It will be free and will start in May 2007.
It will be not so much coaching as part tele-class, part Q&A and
part mutual discussion on pertinant topics, with laser coaching
when its called for.

To sign up for this Roundtable, just fill in the form below and
push the "Submit" button. I will immediately put you on
the access list and send you back the telephone number
you will need to call and a pin number that will let you in.

Looking forward to talking with you then.

In future issues, I will be selecting a question that is related
to Life Coaching and/or one of the topics I have presented or
one that you would like me to cover. Just send your questions to
questions@mycoachjason.com

Life Coach Jason Wittman, MPS, brings to his life coaching
practice extensive experience in the therapeutic counseling and
coaching worlds. He is a Certified Hypnotherapist,
Neuro-Linguistic Programming Practitioner and holds a masters in
counseling psychology. He has been coaching his clients to
achieve winning lives for themselves since the mid-1980s. He
believes that any endeavor in life and business can be designed
into a winnable game worth playing. He assists his clients to
design winnable games worth playing and coaches them to win.

If you would like to explore, risk-free, the possibility of
investing in a Life Coaching relationship with me as your coach.
I offer a brief 30 minute phone consultation where we can
discuss your questions about coaching and if I am the right
person for you. If you would like to schedule an appointment,
email me at freeconsultation@mycoachjason.com

Jason Wittman Life Coaching
P.O. Box 46606
West Hollywood, CA 90046

Info@MyCoachJason.com
http://MyCoachJason.com
http://TheParentsCoach.com

Return to top