Have you ever wondered why everyone else looks happier or is healthier than you? The first step to a healthier or happier you is to stop comparing yourself to others. Then, you want to ask yourself some powerful questions about HOW you would like to live your life. Identify what has been bothering you the most. Next, tell yourself what it is you want to achieve....(I want to have more energy.) Then, honestly, tell yourself what you have been doing to prevent this achievement from happening. Now, dig a bit deeper and really tell yourself what you are afraid of doing, or seeing happen. (Maybe you are afraid of succeeding?) Okay, now you can see what you are afraid of, however, what assumptions are you clinging onto that may happen when you start living your life the way you want to? (Maybe it's about jealous people not liking you because you are now successful?) Wow, have you been thinking less than positive thoughts about yourself all along? Can you see how your thoughts have been holding you back? Finally, how will you know if you are successful? If you have been assuming negative things will happen, when you live your life the healthiest and happiest way possible.......can you see how your assumptions are holding you back from success? So, what is one thing you can do to begin to live a healthier, happier life? If you start by doing this one thing, do your assumptions start to bubble up in your mind? If they do, then noticing and telling your self that these assumptions are getting in the way is fabulous! You now can see how to be successful. You also can read more about transforming your life in Dr. Gruder's book The New IQ: How Integrity Serves You, Your Relationships and Our World, http://www.thenewiq.com/. In the book, Seven Languages for Transformation, Dr's Kegan and Lahey describe and show how you really can transform your life, living your healthiest and happiest ever. I would love to hear about your success and life transformations. Send them to Jamie@personaleffectivenesslifecoach.com.

How would you rate your boundary effectiveness during the holidays? Do your boundaries seem to slip away even though you know what you want to do? How effective are you at setting a spending limit and honoring your decision? How effective are you at setting eating and drinking guidelines at parties and honoring your decision? How effective are you at exercising during the holidays and honoring your decision? Having an exhilarating holiday season is a dream. Comprehending how to enhance your personal effectiveness can be as simple as setting boundaries for yourself.

1.Create a vision for yourself about how you want to look, feel and be as the holiday season ends.

2.During the holidays, notice when you have a boundary to honor.

3. Identify what it is that you really want to accomplish. Isn't a boundary a means of protecting yourself?

4. Commit to staying true to yourself and honor that boundary, because you want to end the holiday season feeling fabulous about yourself.

What makes boundaries a challenge is the fact that you don't have a strategy to use or keep you on track. Your attitude may also be too strong or too shy to honor your true self and what you desire to be. Can you create an action step each day, that you will follow through with regarding an important boundary you want to keep? What is your vision for a happy, fulfilling holiday season? Setting and honoring personal boundaries can be a first step to genuine happiness, not only for the holiday season, but all year long!

"What change would you be most interested in witnessing if you could look into the future?" asked Kelly. When you think about your answer, doesn't this usually create that momentary, drawn out silence that says, wow, this is a powerful question? I, too, felt the power of this question (....after reading Kelly's blog: the ranch insider... at http://www.canyonranch.com pulling me to think about the positive changes that will be occurring in my life. It truly is about the successes we have enjoyed (and can enjoy) and the resiliency that we found (whether naturally or learned) to overcome our challenges and downfalls.

I agree with Kelly that, internally, it feels better to look forward with a sense of renewal and hope. It is about our action steps, no matter how small they may be, our commitment and our sense of purpose that propels us into finding fresh starts.....in and around anything we value!!

Our self-esteem and personal effectiveness enhances our thoughts to be positive or negative, our feelings to be positive or negative and our actions to be positive or negative... depending on what will inspire you to create change in your life. Have you had the opportunity to experience a wake-up call in your life? Some of us will create a new path, regarding the wake-up call, with renewed hope in ourselves, while others will fall into the same old pattern until we experience another more intense wake-up call. These wake-up calls are simple. If we pay attention, we can inspire ourselves to create change and take action toward something that we value doing.

During this approaching holiday season, what will you do to inspire your self in order to enhance the life you want to lead? I agree with Kelly, when you make positive changes within yourself and you enhance your life, your personal effectiveness, your integrity, your self-esteem will flourish!  You too, will be making changes that influence and change the people in your life which will flow into our world making it a better place. What is one thing you can do this holiday season to create a fresh start for yourself? What level of commitment will you agree to? What change can you see in your future by doing this one thing? I would enjoy hearing about your thoughts and plans for success. You can send them to Jamie@personaleffectivenesslifecoach.com. Thanks Kelly for inspiring me!!

What are the benefits of worksite coaching programs? Does your employer offer this benefit to you and your associates? Do you want to change the health and personal effectiveness of your employees and the culture of your organization? Making an investment in wellness coaching can and will make changes to your company's return on investment, especially your associates and the culture of your workplace. Making good and better decisions about your health and personal effectiveness can elicit spectacular results at work and in your personal life. Coaching becomes a part of your support for and during all of the activities that you become engaged. To be able to achieve your fullest health and wellness potential, your choices and decisions need to be embedded in a foundation of integrity. Coaching becomes integrated into all your activities at work and in your personal life. High quality coaching programs benefit every organization and permeate the quality of everyone's life. If you are one of the lucky worksites that offer coaching programs, check to see if your program meets these benchmarks. Your great coaches: 1. obtain results because they know you all are competent; 2. listen, because they elicit your best thinking and decision making; 3. get fantastic results because they ask amazingly, great questions full of resourcefulness and clarity; 4. use YOUR information well to support behavior change; 5.tap into what is important to you; and 6. do not give advice often, unless asked. Worksite coaching programs focus on outcomes that are desired and actions that will maximize worksite and personal benefits. Creating positive change in a worksite as a result of each person having the opportunity to be coached, can elicit better decision making with regard to what each person can and will do. Isn't personal effectiveness maximizing one's success for an outcome you want and creating an action you will actually do to create a difference? What will you commit to at work or personally... today? Let me know your successes.

Is your company one of the few companies that has a worksite wellness program? Are your healthcare costs still rising for your organization and employees? What is your wellness program actually doing to reduce healthcare costs? To begin, the first step is to have your worksite wellness program driven from the top, your senior level executives. Do they really adopt a healthier lifestyle when at work? The second step, is to develop a strategic plan that is put in writing for the organization. Having strategic and measurable objectives is paramount. Step three is to develop a connection between your worksite wellness program and your company's insurmountable health care costs. Has your company been able to stabilize healthcare costs within your organization? The fourth step is to develop telephonic, wellness coaching (it's a start) for your employees that have four or more risk factors. By doing this, your company will achieve a major benchmark and become a leader for administering a results-oriented worksite wellness program. The fifth step is to identify and own the fact that obesity has the most chronic effect on one's health. You can download The Wellcoaches Inc. White Paper on The Obesity Epidemic by going to http://www.personaleffectivenesslifecoach.com/ and getting your free copy. The sixth step is to walk the talk and make your health and well-being the focus of living your healthiest and best life possible. Only when making  worksite wellness programs number one on your priority list, will your organization begin to go from good to great.

Does your company know what a healthy employee really is? Is your company doing all it can to help you become the master of optimal health and well-being? The truth is, a company's greatest asset is the people who work for the company. Is your work place draining your energy or helping to create an endless supply of energy and zest? Since health care costs are rising at an alarmingly rate, is your company helping you to live your best life? Today, health and wellness programs are considered an integral part of the strategic development plan for companies who truly value their employees. Having a health and wellness coordinator on staff is one of the key links to keeping a company committed to honoring the employees. Worksite wellness initiatives educate employees, engage employees to take responsibility for their health and well-being choices, and deliver telephonic personal health coaching services for all employees. When your company develops a worksite wellness initiative, absenteeism declines, positive attitudes begin to flourish more, energy for life at home and work increases, a new regard for integrity transforms lives, and productivity abounds. What are you doing to create a partnership with your worksite wellness initiative?

If you need to improve your personal effectiveness at home and work, chances are you've already tried numerous programs, without long-term success. So, the usual advice is...pay less attention to others, honor yourself more, and don't give up! Those who are happiest and who have been happy for more than five years are living a life of 3-D integrity. These clients offer their best tips.

1. Ask Yourself and Analyze the Payoff You Get from Living Without Integrity

What is your lack of integrity or personal effectiveness doing for you? Put another way, What are you getting out of NOT living a life with integrity?

2. Assess, How Ready are You to Change... How do you assess your readiness?

Begin by asking and identifying areas that need upgrading: How stable is my financial situation? Is my job likely to stay the same for the near future? Do I have the time to devote to improving my integrity? Are my relationships going well right now? Do I feel connected to my family and friends? Your answers to these questions will fall into one of these categories: I won't do that...I may do that....I am going to do that...I will do this one thing to start today....I will continue to honor my commitments to living a life with integrity.....

3. Consider Your Options

A plan that works for some people doesn't always work for others.Get different advice from many resources, especially people who you think are leading the life the way you envision it!

4. Build in Some Accountability

Being accountable to following your integrity makeover plan for personal effectiveness with honor, whatever it is, is imperative.

5. Adjust Your Expectations

It can be frustrating and that is true. That more conscious way of doing something better, simply doesn't come overnight. It may take more time that you thought to feel great and understand fully how to change.

6. Develop Healthy Selfishness for YOU

Many people, women in particular, have a difficult time putting themselves first. They usually help their spouse, family, friends, and co-workers, before remembering to do one thing for themselves.

7. Honor Your Environment

Even if you're committed to following a new, integrity plan, it can be difficult without support from family or friends.

8. Talk to Healthy People Living the Life and Doing Things You Value

9. Find Your Secret Weapons

Most people who live with integrity, can tell you what the difference is when you are living without integrity. They can tell you what tools or strategies they use to help them stay on track. Making this time, the time they don't quit and will honor themselves living their life with integrity is honoring what you truly value.

10. Reward your Success - Create a Grateful List

Anyone who has received integrity makeoever information, already knows the rule, live by your genuine values and you will authentically be a happy person, living a life that has relationships that keep you connected, and provides you with the fulfillment of a sense of purpose in this world!

You have the ability to teach and help people be the best possible person they can be! Here are ten basic principles for fostering the best in others. These principles can help teach others, while you live a life of being highly, personally effective.

1. Faith: having faith in other people can move mountains, it can inspire them to accomplish more than they ever dreamed possible.

2. No Failures: make each day a day where no one in your life has to believe they are failures; this doesn't mean they can't make mistakes... they simply can't fail;

3. Faithfulness or Responsibility: all things need to be done with care....how we speak to others, how we care for our personal self, how we care for our work or living space, how we interact with others, how we help others....all with a loving attitude;

4. Be a Friend: keeping the confidences of your friends and family members creates trust; saying positive things, being a friend that let's another person shine their light is sterling;

5. Strive for Excellence: teach anyone, from any background, how to devote their life to being, believing and doing the best they possibly can be...striving for excellence.

6. Make it a Passion: help others as if you are dedicated to helping every person find their own happiness... as if it really matters to you;

7. Be an Inspiration: help anyone become motivated for being a kinder, more generous person to others;

8. Have a Positive Attitude: every person becomes a winner when positive, optimistic attitudes prevail; make your positive attitude shine through for everyone;

9. Be a Superior Role Model: an ordinary person will allow anything to happen, whereas a superior person will help fair people become better, better people become great, and great people become superior;

10. Be Persistent: if there is little success at first, being persistent could make all the difference in someone's life.

When you bring out the best in others, not only does their light shine brighter, but your light becomes a beacon to show them the way! What have you done to teach or show others how to be personally effective today? What have you done to help someone else believe in themselves?

  You can improve the quality of your life by creating an awareness that your physical and emotional well-being are linked together.  Your capacity for bonding, emotional communication, and intuition are learned early in life. Optimal growth and development can occur during the early years of your development if you received quality attention and love from your caregiver.  This is the time when you are laying down the foundation for your connection with your caregiver and developing the skills of how you will be able to connect emotionally, physically and bond intuitively with people throughout your life. Amazing, isn't it?  When you think back to your childhood, did you receive wonderful, positive, and intense care from someone in your life? Maybe it was your grandmother, or a teacher at school, or a step-parent, or a sibling. This type of bonding early in your life is crucial for developing your gut feelings, emotional intelligence and inner intuitiveness later in life. If your parent or caregiver developed patience, found the ability to rest and rejuvenate each day, and found joy in helping you grow as a child, your emotional well-being and intuition about people will be strong and true. Do you have personally effective skills of resilience, trust, patience, intuition and the ability to connect with people? These are some of the skills and feelings that will help you notice your own needs. Looking at your early years of growing up will help you become more aware of why you make the choices you make, how to access your own feelings and understand your emotional needs and those of others. When you can regulate your own emotions your quality of life will improve, including your physical health and well-being. This is what successful healthy living is all about! What emotional qualities do you need to learn, develop and use to improve your quality of life?  

  What does your best life look like? Do you have the mindset for success? What is your mind programmed to believe and think about in order to live your best life? Does your life radiate a new possibility to the world about living your best life? To live your best life, you must be able to have a dream, a vision of what this will look like. You also have to believe you can have it! Do you believe everything has to be in order? Do you believe you have to have read all the right books, have taken all the right coursework, met all the right people, created the best web-site, and had all the right previous jobs? These things certainly will help, however these things do not have to be in order. Investing in yourself and making a commitment to creating a new action step each day/week will help you begin the journey of living your best life. I live my best life because I have a genuine and strong foundation of integrity upon which my thoughts, words and actions are based. I create new connections each day with people in my field, and strengthen relationships with clients, family and any new person I meet. If you want to live your best life, what do you want to learn or change or become? New ideas become results through new actions. "Often the experience of a personal crisis or a failure will constitute a basis for the creation of a personal vision, which in turn becomes the framework for a life of possibility." says Benjamin Zander and Rosamund Stone Zander in their book The Art of Possibility. You can read more about The Art of Possibility at www.benjaminzander.com/book.