June 2008 - Featured Articles

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The Violet Ray Interview with International Success Coach Michael Neill
By Carol Uchytil

Carol - You are conducting an Effortless Success Workshop here in Red Deer in September. What is success to you and, since everything we do requires some form of energy, how can it be effortless?

Michael - To me success is about balancing the inner and the outer so that you are having a wonderful experience of going for, getting and having what you want. For a lot of people that is peace of mind and a nice piece of real estate. It's being happy in yourself and delighted with your life. What it comes down to, is finding out for yourself how you want to be in the world, which is the inner, and then what you want to have. The ultimate success myth is that when you get all the stuff you want, when you have as much money that you want, when you have all the things in your life, then you will be happy.

The reality that I have discovered, in over 20 years of working with people, is the opposite. When you start from well-being and start from your own innate happiness then the success part is not that hard. So, in terms of everything involving an expenditure of effort, I initially wanted to title the programs "Seemingly Effortless Success" for exactly that reason. What people always report when they begin to work with things in the way that I teach is "It feels effortless". It's like they are just doing what they want to be doing anyways, so there is not that sense of struggle to make things happen.

One of the metaphors that I use for succeeding is that when you are following the flow of your inner knowing, it is like sitting in a canoe and being guided down a river. Traditional ways of trying to succeed, effort-full success, are like putting the canoe on your head and trying to walk somewhere on the dry riverbed. You might still get there but you are going to be exhausted, tired, your feet are going to hurt and getting back in the riverbed is the last thing you are going to want to do.

Carol - You teach that happiness leads to success and clarity leads to happiness. Where does clarity come from?

Michael - Happiness leads to clarity as well. It all starts with well-being. There is no question that the more people are grounded in their own well-being, the easier everything flows. It's much easier to be clear when you are grounded and there are a lot of things that I teach which also help you get clear when you are stuck. Also, from that clarity, it's very natural for you to know what the next thing to do is. You may encounter moments when you do not know what to do but because you are not scared you just sit with it and then the next thing appears.

I was talking to a client once and I remember they were following their inner guidance. This was a somewhat religious woman whom equated the inner guidance with God. She found that everything had been falling into her lap, that everything had been unfolding beautifully and she was starting to get really close to her goal and she heard herself say " Thank you God, It's Ok. I can handle it from here." And, of course, at that point, she went right back into the struggle and right back into the effort, because she suddenly felt she had to control things. It's not something you can control although you are in full command.

For most people, the progression that they describe to me when they begin to learn the principles of effortless success is this: in the first stage, their problems just kind of go away, and it's disorienting to them at first. I'll ask them how they're doing and they'll say "I'm fine." When I ask them what they mean by "fine", their response will be " I don't know. It's just weird. There's absolutely nothing wrong with my life." It feels like something is missing, but what's missing is the vague sense of background stress that most people are carrying around with them all day long. So the first stage is really about accepting that everything is OK.

The next stage I tend to describe as the "Driving Daddy's Ferrari" stage. In this stage, amazing things start to happen and people are able to suddenly realize "I can do this or I can do that" and they are doing it. But there is also this sense that if they are not careful they are going to crash the car. All of this is exciting but a little bit scary and they are a little bit in wonder as to "Is this really going to work again?"

The third stage and, ultimately, the stage that I work with everyone to get to is where you understand that it's not only your Ferrari but it is also your garage.

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