Putting FUN on your task list

Richard Branson has always espoused that fun was an integral, if not fundamental, aspect of any business undertaking.

Not fun as in be silly, or reckless, but fun as in completely absorbed, exhilarated with what you're doing, feeling in the flow and high vibing it through your day.

This is from the man who once wore nothing but a plastic mobile phone covering his dignity to launch Virgin Mobile.

Silly or fun? Hmm, maybe both.

More fun sounds good to me! But if you could have more of just one the following, what would YOU choose?

• More money
• More adventure
• More freedom
• More sex
• More fun

A recent survey of my clients indicated that the one thing they would like more of - more than money, freedom, sex, adventure - was FUN.

Well blow me down with a feather. I was hedging bets on 'adventure', 'freedom' and a sure thing on 'money'. But no, it was fun that won out.

Seems we are a community sadly lacking in engagement, exhilaration and laughs.

How did we start taking ourselves so seriously?

C'mon people, life is for LIVING - not wiling away the hours until we can collapse on the weekend.

I hereby declare a mandate for Fun being listed as the top priority on your task list.

But you don't DO fun, you HAVE fun.

And incredibly, some people struggle to define how to have fun.

So let's get the ball rolling. What is your idea of fun?

Here are a few to get us started: swimming in the ocean, Friday night pizza and beers, a walk in the morning when the sun comes up, laughing uncontrollably (check out Damn You Auto Correct for help on this one), dancing in the supermarket aisles (especially if it embarrasses your partner), in fact, dancing wildly at any inopportune moments fits the bill nicely, reading in bed, a good tickle fight, chasing chickens, taking photos, playing with dogs, eating way too much chocolate, that first sip of beer on a warm summer's day.

I could go on, but I want YOUR inspiration! List your top three ways to have fun!

Busting Beliefs with Booty Bootcamp: Back on - Weeks 3 & 4

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Have you got these foundations?

Are you trying to build your House of Dreams on your own?

No wonder it's taking so darn long...

You wouldn't build your Dream House on your own, would you?
Why build your House of Dreams on your own?
It's a recipe for frustration and disappointment.

Just like you'd want a dream team to work on your Dream House, you'll need a Dream Team to build your House of Dreams.

This is the kind of support I desire for my 2008 House of Dreams too. After all, I want for my clients what I want for myself – peace, fun, freedom, and the easy way. So I've put together this 4 week telecourse to support you (and me) in creating a magical, majestic, fantastic, fabulous, I-love-it 2008.

3 Pillars of Personal Power

4 week telecourse starts February 6th 2008

Get your rock-solid foundations in place

Physics shows us that when vibrations of the same frequency are in alignment, then the combined wavelength doubles in intensity. Imagine the power of ten, fifteen, twenty people together, focused on your success...

Now that's some kind of energy!

The telecourse has two main functions:

1. Collaboration – to ramp up our collective vibe.
2. Overhaul the 3 Pillars of Personal Power for a strong foundation

Building a house with solid foundations makes sense. When it comes to building Dreams however, folks don't often pay attention to the fundamentals, to the detriment of their desires, and quite often, their hope.

When I start working with folks, before we make any big goals, we sort out the basics first. These are the 3 Pillars of Personal Power.

The 3 Pillars that support your house of dreams are:

1. Supportive Environments – this includes your home, your office, your clothes, your possessions, your body, and your relationships.
2. Focus Funnel – this is the distillation of your core values to crystal clear key priorities, and the manifestation strategies to attract them.
3. Breakthrough Beliefs – this is the central Pillar of Personal Power. Either your beliefs are in line with your goals (and they are manifesting before your eyes), or they aren't, and your goals feel like hard work and always out of reach.

In this 4 week interactive telecourse you will:

• Clarify your key priorities and vision for 2008 so that it scintillates and inspires and not just another list of goals that seem too hard and out of reach, adding heavy lines to your to-do list
• Streamline your environments for increased energy, peace of mind, and effortless achievement – you can easily double your productivity
• Blast old limiting beliefs about why you don't already have what you want, and clear the way to let it all in at last
• Engage with like-minded folks who are super-charged for a brilliant 2008 and feel your collective enthusiasm compound your attraction power
• Evaporate resistance, doubt, and fears with powerful, simple techniques that you can keep using beyond the course, becoming even more of a magnet for what you desire.
• Create an action plan and start working it. This is not the usual set a goal, create a deadline, break down the steps, and plod along. Too much hard work here - this is a much more fun and easy way to work your plan.

No doubt about it, collaboration creates accountability and focus. This is just what all of us need if we are to recreate our lives in a new direction. Doing it alone is just way too hard, whether it is the career woman who wants some recognition, the partner in a law firm who wants to work less but achieve more, or the working mom who wants to gain financial independence. Trying to do it all by yourself, like some sort of superhero, is crushing – to the ego, to personal health, and to your dreams.

It doesn't have to be like this! The truth is that humans are actually built, cell by cell, to be collaborative beings.Your entire body is made up of a community of millions of cooperative individual cells.

Your cells know the benefit of collaboration – they've built a fabulous house for the soul - now it's time for you to build a solid house for your dreams and aspirations. Achieving success can be fun, flowing, engaging, and easy – if you join with like-minded supportive folks focussed on your success.

Here's what you get in the 3 Pillars of Personal Power telecourse:

• Meet by phone 8pm Wednesday nights EST (NY) starting February 6th 2008
• (that's noon Sydney-time on Thursday February 7th)
• 4 weekly interactive teleclasses
• Recordings of all teleclasses if you are not able to dial in live – yours to keep for future reference so you won't miss a thing
• Worksheets to be submitted and reviewed individually each week by the coach (a.k.a. moi!)
• Personal coaching support between calls through the exclusive member's only forum
• The brand new Inner Compass Clean Sweep self-assessment for long-term focus
• 52 week Environmental Design e-course – weekly emails for a whole year to continue your environment overhaul
• Your investment is $227 U.S. (includes the teleclasses, private forum, worksheets, Clean Sweep and 52 week e-course) and is payable online with our secure shopping cart here

• Class is limited to fifteen people and spots are filling already. I am completely committed to making this a flowing and effective experience for you. So if you're feeling inspired to 'do' 2008 in style, make your move now. Questions? Email me at zoe@innercompass.com.au.This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
• Special opportunity for Canberra residents: I am offering this course as a live face-to-face workshop for four consecutive Wednesday evenings 7-8:30pm Canberra time, starting February 6th. You will also get all the same resources and access as the telecourse. This is an excusive offer for only 6 people - I don't want my office to get too crowded! So if you want intimate, powerful, face-to-face support, then book in now before all the spots go. Investment: $330 AUD. If you want to be part of this exclusive group, email me at zoe@innercompass.com.auThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it for all the details.
  

Course Outline

Week #1 Wed February 6th, 2008 EST (NY)
(Aussie time: 12pm Thursday February 7th, 2008)

• Working the Focus Funnel and fine-tuning intentions
• Choosing the right game
• Manifestation strategies to amp up the vibe
• Identifying blocks – discovering the Awareness Muscle

Week#2 Wed February 13th, 2008 EST (NY)
(Aussie time: 12pm Thursday February 14th, 2008)

• Overhaul environments in three simple steps
• Blasting blocks in the environments
• The three commitments for simple and powerful transformations

Week #3 Wed February 20th, 2008 EST (NY)
(Aussie time: 12pm Thursday February 21st, 2008)

• Flexing your awareness muscle
• Belief Busters for the brain and being
• Scrambling energy patterns

Week #4 Wed February 27th, 2008 EST (NY)
(Aussie time: 12pm Thursday February 28th, 2008)

• From crap to cream – how to turn around common limiting beliefs
• Your Action Plan – the funnest, simplest way to have your cake and eat it too

Who am I to be your guide?

I've dedicated my life to personal growth, working over twenty years with people in Canada and Australia to discover their potential. 9 of these years were with the YM-YWCA leading canoe trips and managing the outtripping program. I led many canoe trips, the longest trip being 6 weeks across northwest Ontario. I also spent ten years with Outward Bound Australia, leading groups through the outback, implementing the award winning instructor Internship program, and leading the team with various executive roles. I established Inner Compass in 2003 and have coached hundreds of individuals and groups in busting through limitations and sailing forward easily. I've run 6 marathons, the last one 7 months after surgery and chemotherapy for cancer. As you can see, I love Big Goals! I also love learning and am a passionate reader and student of humanity and self-growth. This year I am focusing on learning and community with my intention to experience a peaceful and fun-filled 2008. Won't you join me? I look forward to sharing the vibe with you.

What do you do for fun?

A surfer gets ready to tackle the surf at Camel Rock, Bermagui, on New Year's Day, 2008

When I start work with a client, one of the first things we do is focus on fun. This comes even before sorting out goals, aspirations, visions, and wish lists. I find that if you take someone who is already a keenly motivated individual and start talking about re-designing their life and lifestyle, they want to tackle it like they would any other project. Living a great life just becomes one more 'to do' on the task list.

And you know as well as I do that if you take the energy of 'hard work' and 'must achieve' to even something as delightful as creating a brilliant life, then that's what you'll get - creating a life you love that is full of hard work. Ugh. I personally am over the 'hard work', nose-to-the-grindstone, approach to living life, and prefer instead the energy of 'grooviness, peace, flow, and FUN!'

So to cut through this Type A personality, must-achieve mentality, we go right to heart of the matter: first, have some fun. This ramps up the vibe straight away and makes all other lifestyle re-design 'work' an adventure and an exploration instead of a chore.

In fact, one of the best things I learned recently from Eva Gregory, one of the super coaches I interviewed for Law of Attraction Superhighway, is her motto is, "Fun is number one." Now that's a motto worth adopting!

In a recent conversation with coaching client 'Susan', this notion of fun was met with confusion and blank looks. "Fun? I don't have time for fun. I don't remember the last time I had fun, just for fun's sake. How do you have fun again?"

Susan had been so busy being a grown-up, parent, a bread-winner, an ex-wife, a manager that she'd denied herself the simple pleasure of goofing off. After all, she had serious responsibilities - for her children, her step-children, her house, her staff. Life is serious.

Or so Susan believed, at least until she worked out being serious all the time was sapping her life force. Life, in being so serious, was simply passing her by.

Not so now! Susan re-discovered the art of fun. She started slowly - a haircut, a manicure, lunch with a friend, reading a book. Once she eased in to the flow of that feel-good vibe, she started to get a little more adventurous: cooking classes, dance lessons, and heavens forbid - even going out on a date. Good for you Susan.

And so I dedicate 2008 to the Year of Fun, and all those who wish to embrace fun as a way of being, not just a way of recovering.

Want some ideas for fun? Here are some snaps from my Christmas holiday down at the beach - fun central.

Rob catching a wave with his new Manta X Pro 44 inch boogie board.

Rob between sets in the massive New Year's surf.

Me hitting the perfect putt after a great hole on the course - two hits in to the bunker (not so good!) and then sand wedge on to the green followed by this lovely putt that sank like gem in water.

No better way to have fun than simply goof off! This is me hamming it up for the camera in the ever-fashionable and oh-so comfortable Crocs.

Charlie - looking hip in sunnies and cap, has much fun kicking a plastic ball and eating dirt. Ahhh - the simple pleasures of youth.

What's your favourite goof off activity? Drop a comment and let us know. I'm always looking for more goof off ideas!