I’ve started a new and better blog, over at www.DebbyHallett.com, so I won’t be updating the blog here at Treehouse Coaching any more.

Please come see me there!

I’m beginning to think that the main way to success is consistency — consistently taking another step forward, today, into the future you want.

Think about people who you know who don’t follow through with what they say they will do. Some would say, ‘You can’t trust them.’ But it’s not that, exactly. It’s that you can trust them to behave consistently. If they consistently fail to keep their word, then that’s what you can rely on.

So take a look at where you are consistent. Is it the message you really want to deliver?

There are 2 types of change:

1. Technical change – when the solution is known and can be provided
2. Adaptive change – requires experimentation, changes of perspective, group synergy to find a new way of operating.

For example, I tried to teach project managers a new technique to improve the accuracy of their project estimates. I found that only about 2 in 5 project managers actually estimated their project costs. For these 2 people, the technical change of learning a new estimating technique helped them manage their projects better.

For the other 3 project managers, no amount of training in new estimation techniques would help — they needed to understand why estimation was important and to find a way to do it in a way that benefitted them and the organisation. They needed new attitides, perspectives and motivation — an adaptive change.

Weight loss attempts are similar. Some people simply need to be taught what to do. Once they have their nutritional plan and exercise regime, their weight comes off easily and steadily. The solution is available and it can be taught to them. These are the people you see giving brilliant testimonials, or the success stories who appear on Oprah. For others, it’s not enough to know what to do. They need help to change their lifestyles, to experiment with solutions until they find one (or a combo of several) that works for them. They may need a support network, or to find help in changing self-defeating habits.

Technical Change Needed - park somewhere else

Adaptive Change Needed - we need to work out our parking

Technical change is easy and straightforward and the solutions are known or can be provided.

Adaptive change requires experimentation, adjustment, observation, and work on a more systemic level.

If you want to learn how to use Excel for managing your family’s finances, you can take a course or read a book — the knowledge is out there. But if you want to know how to find an organisation to work for where your values are supported and your intellect is challenged, well, you’ll have to do some thinking and experimenting, some research and trial and error, and it might not be easy or straightforward.

Technical changes are new ways to do things. Adaptive changes are where you use new approaches and perspectives for new solutions that bring new results. This is where coaching can help.

Harvard Business Review wants me to renew my subscription for £85. I’m waffling. I feel very frugal at the moment, not wanting to spend money. On the other hand, I really love reading HBR, and it may prove valuable in my consultancy work. But £85 feels like a lot of money.

My husband suggested I take The Stranger Test. He saw this on Life Hacker. It was touted as a way to manage your tendencies to make expensive impulse purchases.

If a stranger came to me and offered me £85, but that meant I couldn’t have the HBR delivered to my door for a year, what would I do?

I’d take the subscription over £85. In fact, I’d for sure take the subscription until the price got nearer to £125. But don’t tell the publishers that!

We followed the same route when considering whether to upgrade our cable box to V+. (A bargain at £49.99, not worth it at £99.99)

Why not give it a try? Yes, it can help you with your impulse purchases. But I find that it helps me decide about all sorts of things. It helps me by giving me a tool I can use to discover exactly how much I value something. From Belgian chocolates to tumble dryers.

See more: The Stranger Test

I recently came across a little red book someone gave me years ago that claimed to have the secret to a happy life.

It Works, by Roy Herbert Jarrett, has three simple rules:

1. Write down what you want to be, do or have in life. Be specific, be positive, and write them on a list with the most important things at the top.

2. Read your list 3 times a day: morning, afternoon, and night. Remove what you already have or no longer want. Add new things as they come into your awareness.

3. Don’t tell others about your list.

He says you’ll be amazed and grateful for all that this technique brings into your life.

What do you think? Is there power in writing your wants down and focussing on them often?

(Have you seen or read The Secret?)

Or is it snake oil?

I’ll bet you’re probably clear about the things you don’t want in your life. You don’t want nasty neighbours, a lousy job, or a car that’s always breaking down. These days, you especially don’t want to lose your job, or your house, and you don’t want your insurance premiums to go up. Do you?

But does it really work to live your life by avoiding all the things you don’t want? No matter how many things you put on your Things I Don’t Want list, there will always be a million more that you forget to add. There are three kinds of things in life: things you don’t want, things you do want, and lots of things that you don’t necessarily want, but you’re not really negative about them either. The trick is not to clutter up your life with the last group: things you don’t particularly want and that won’t make you happy.

Picture yourself doing the weekly shop at Tesco, with a long list of the things you definitely don’t want. You crawl down each aisle, checking every item you see against your list. If it’s on the list, you pass it by. But if it’s not on the list, what do you do? Buy it? Think about it and maybe come back to get it later? Stress out? Melt down?

Shopping this way, your weekly shop would take forever, cost a fortune, and when you finally got home, you’d have mountains of stuff, but nothing for dinner. Light bulbs (several of the new energy-saving sort, since they’re not on your list), a Monty Python DVD, two varieties of pink double-quilted loo roll, reduced-price Christmas pudding, three kinds of artificial sweetener, a floor mop. A trolley-full of things that aren’t what you really want.

When you live your life from a list of things you don’t want, life is complicated, expensive and unsatisfying.

Instead, it’s worth your time to make a list of all the things you do want in your life. A well paid, satisfying job? A warm, affordable home? Happy children who feel confident and relaxed? A spouse who loves you, and whom you love? A sense of purpose in your life that you fulfil every day? Go for it! Figure out exactly what you want, and focus on that.

Take a few minutes the next time you sit down for a cuppa. Get a pen and paper.

1. Pretend you have a magic wand that will make any part of your life just like you want it. What areas of your life would you touch? Finances? Career? Children? Health & Fitness? Relationship? Spirituality or religion? Personal time? Hobbies? List the 4 or 5 top areas.
2. For each area, rate your current satisfaction from 1 to 10, where 10 is that it’s just exactly as you’d like it to be. Now it’s easier to see where you’d like to wave that magic wand. Choose one area to focus on, the one where you’ll decide what you want. Circle it! This is where you’ll focus your attention: on what you want, not on what you don’t want.
3. Now, if you were to wave that magic wand, what would you say just before you say ‘Abracadabra!’? Let’s say you chose Career. If you had the career you want, what would you be doing? Working for yourself, rather than in a job? Working in a different position, or different industry? A promotion? A pay rise? Picture clearly what you want. If you sometimes complain about your job, what do you complain about? Complaining is focussing on what you don’t want. What’s the opposite of that? What would have to happen for the job to be wonderful, for you to feel excited to go to work every day?
4. Write that down! It’s really important to write down what you want. Somehow our minds grab hold of things better when we write them down. If your mind starts up the negative talk again (I don’t want to work in an office, I don’t want to be a customer services rep), pay it no heed. Turn your attention from that and focus on what you want. Your mind should be your servant, not your master.

This is the first step to accessing a powerful force that will always support you: your own positive focus on what you do want. Once you discover this, your life will change forever. May your trolley be overflowing with your heart’s desires!