The Lifeworks Group, Inc.

By: Dwight Bain     Questions - they change our lives. Jesus the Master teacher continually asked questions. Here are strategic questions covering the key areas of life to keep you sharp as a coach, or to use in challenging the thinking of your coaching clients. Faith– No matter your current spiritual state, growing your faith is an essential part of a successful life. What goals do you need to set to develop your spiritual core? Family– Is your family on course? Are you communicating, spending quality time together, and working as a team? No family is perfect. Talk to each other about what needs improvement in your family life. Finances– When is the last time you evaluated your finances? Do you have a budget? Is your budget for this year in line with your obligations? Most people ignore this area, or just fight about it. Take time now to review your spending, create additional saving, speed up debt service and don't neglect the importance of ch...

By Dwight Bain Want a better life? Get a better coach because if you pick the wrong one you will not experience the results you want. In fact if you have a bad coach you may have to fire them. Don’t worry - A non-performing coach knows you will fire them since coaching is about results for the client, nothing more, nothing less. So how can you find a better coach? Here are the action steps to help you, and those you care about , find a coach who can challenge you to climb higher, dream bigger and accomplish more than you could have ever done alone. Start with the basics in your own life… 1. Are you “coachable,” that is, do you seek out coaching and respond to critique? 2. Is your life emotionally stable? 3. Are you ready for a coach? 4. Do you have the time to take on new projects? 5. Are you eager to move past the roadblocks toward experiencing your potential? If you answered ‘Yes” to at least 4 of these 5 questions then move forward to th...

by Jim Rohn When it comes to meeting and conquering the negativity in your life, here is a key question: what can you do, starting today, that will make a difference? What can you do during economic chaos? What can you do when everything has gone wrong? What can you do when you’ve run out of money, when you don’t feel well and it’s all gone sour? What can you do? Let me give you the broad answer first. You can do the most remarkable things, no matter what happens. People can do incredible things, unbelievable things, despite the most impossible or disastrous circumstances. Here is why humans can do remarkable things: because they are remarkable. Humans are different than any other creation. When a dog starts with weeds, he winds up with weeds. And the reason is because he’s a dog. But that’s not true with human beings. Humans can turn weeds into gardens. Humans can turn nothing into something, pennies into fortune, and disaster into success. And the reason they can do such remarkable t...

by Jim Rohn Knowledge fueled by emotion equals action. Action is the ingredient that ensures results. Only action can cause reaction. Further, only positive action can cause positive reaction. Action. The whole world loves to watch those who make things happen, and it rewards them for causing waves of productive enterprise. I stress this because today I see many people who are really sold on affirmations. And yet there is a famous saying that “faith without action serves no useful purpose.” How true! I have nothing against affirmations as a tool to create action. Repeated to reinforce a disciplined plan, affirmations can help create wonderful results. But there is also a very thin line between faith and folly. You see, affirmations without action can be the beginnings of self-delusion. And for your well-being, there is little worse than self-delusion. The man who dreams of wealth, and yet walks daily toward certain financial disaster, and the woman who wishes for happiness, and yet thi...

By Paul J. Meyer and Kevin Rhea Every day, every week, and every month will take you closer to your goals IF you are planning your action and then putting action to your plan. These three steps will help you reach your goals: Step One: MONTHLY PLANNING -- Reserve one hour at the end of each month to plan for the coming month. (This can be a quick review if you plan in 90-day cycles.) -- Survey your goals for the year/quarter and your progress on them. -- Break goals and projects down into steps you can accomplish each week. -- Designate specific due dates for completing these interim steps. -- If what you plan will take several months, divide it into steps so that you can accomplish a little each month. Step Two: WEEKLY PLANNING -- Set aside half an hour every Friday afternoon or Monday morning to plan for the upcoming week. -- Look over the goals you've set for the week, and consider any additional tasks that you need to accomplish. -- Divide tasks planned into steps, and choose a...

by Jim Rohn, Business Mentor & Master Coach Over the years as I've sought out ideas, principles and strategies to life's challenges, I've come across four simple words that can make living worthwhile. First, life is worthwhile if you LEARN. What you don't know WILL hurt you. You have to have learning to exist, let alone succeed. Life is worthwhile if you learn from your own experiences - negative or positive. We learn to do it right by first sometimes doing it wrong. We call that a positive negative. We also learn from other people's experiences, both positive and negative. I've always said that it is too bad failures don't give seminars. Obviously, we don't want to pay them so they aren't usually touring around giving seminars. But that information would be very valuable – we would learn how someone who had it all then messed it up. Learning from other people's experiences and mistakes is valuable information because we can learn what not to...

As told by Dwight Bain Krystal Thomas is a champion in anyone’s book. By age 18 the 6’ 5” center had led her high school basketball team to back to back state championships with an average of 19 points/12 rebounds and named State Finals MVP both years. She had played in national tournaments like the McDonalds’s All America Game- where she led her East team to a victory, the WBCA All-America Game, (Women’s Basketball Coaches Association), the AAU Nationals and Nike Tournament of Champions. She had been named Miss Florida Basketball, the Gatorade State Player of the Year and earned USA Today, EA Sports, McDonald’s and Parade first team All-America for her high school career totaling 1,751 points, 1,357 rebounds and 268 blocks. She had won a full scholarship to play for the Lady Blue Devils of Duke University with her remarkable sports career as a teenager and she’s just getting started! This outstanding athlete is already on the fast track to the Olympics by leading her USA Under19 T...

by Dr. John C. Maxwell A train travelling 55 mph on a railroad track can crash through a 5-foot thick steel-reinforced concrete wall without stopping. That same train, starting from a stationary position, won't be able to go through an inch-thick block in front of the driving wheel. It is never the size of your problem that is the problem. It's a lack of momentum. Without momentum, even a tiny obstacle can prevent you from moving forward. With momentum, you'll navigate through problems and barely even notice them. As a leader, your responsibility is to understand momentum, to get it moving for your organization, and to sustain it over time. Momentum can be tricky to comprehend, though, often appearing elusive and intangible. In this article, my goal is to give you handles so that you can better recognize how to generate momentum in your workplace. To help you grasp the concept of momentum, I'll outline ten momentum breakers alongside ten momentum makers. Momentum Breake...

By Gary Eby, Motivational Speaker Lefthanded Soldiers is dedicated to all of those who have been wounded in life ... whether physically, emotionally, spiritually, or financially and yet, against all odds, have risen from the devastation to become a champion! There are few things in life that move me like seeing someone overcome adversity. I believe that there are great men and women from all walks of life, who, because of some “event” or series of events, have pretty much given up. Somewhere between brokenness and bitterness many have laid down their proverbial swords and surrendered. They’ve been wounded. Lefthanded Soldiers teaches us that when we are wounded … when our “right arms” have been hurt … that we can become Lefthanded Soldiers rather than allowing our circumstances to condemn us to a life of “what-ifs.” How many great leaders are no longer leading? What will our society suffer because the leadership we need is somewhere hurting rather than rallying the troops? What ...

By Dr. John C. Maxwell "It's nothing personal; it's just business," is a commonly heard phrase in the workplace. However, I tend to disagree with anyone who tries to impersonalize business. At its heart, commerce is a human enterprise, founded upon relationships between people. Most of us spend a majority of our waking hours in our business or at work, and our vocations endow our lives with meaning or purpose. When we devote ourselves to profession, we're giving a piece of who we are to our work. In that sense, business is deeply personal. In the workplace, as in the rest of life, relationships get messy. Sooner or later, we will be mistreated. A boss will unjustly fault our performance, a partner will fail to honor an agreement, or a co-worker will cut us down in a meeting. Since business is personal, those instances hurt us, and unless dealt with correctly, they can derail us. As a leader, we have to commit to taking the high road when others, intentionally or u...

By John C. Maxwell Almost nightly, the fate of the American health care system headlines the evening news. With costly inefficiencies plaguing the system, employers and workers alike have felt the pain of skyrocketing premiums. Politicians on opposite ends of the political spectrum disagree on the best policies for the future, but there seems to be consensus that the system isn't working well. I'm not advocating a position in the health care debate. I simply want to point out the headaches caused when we don't have good systems. What's true nationally applies individually as well. Broken systems lead to disorganization, confusion, and chaos whereas smooth systems allow us to move quickly and efficiently. The reason for this lesson is to help you understand the importance of developing good systems in your personal and professional leadership. The exact systems that work for me may not pertain to you. It's up to you to find the systems that will benefit you the most....

By Dwight Bain, Nationally Certified Counselor and Certified Life Coach One of my favorite sayings to share with people facing a major decision is "you always have options." Yet in challenging times people are often so frozen by fear from making a wrong decision that they don't make a decision at all and life passes them by. Think of how many events in life are complicated or missed completely because of the roadblock of being afraid to fail by making a decision and then making that decision work… Marriages that didn't happen because of a shy guy with cold feet Promotions that never occurred because of the fear of asking for it Scholarships left on a table somewhere because someone was afraid to fill out the paperwork Trips to exotic places that were always talked about but never taken because no one sat down to schedule it Relationships that failed because someone didn't decide to work on issues and quietly let things 'slip, slide away' Forgiveness that w...

by Mark Victor Hansen Our minds are all we've got. They are the source of who we, both personally and professionally, are. They determine our success or failure. They are our strength and our weakness. With the quality of our entire lives resting on our minds, it's unbelievable that we choose to fill them with so much garbage. The amount of negativity from television, newspapers, tabloids and other media that bombards us on a daily basis is amazing. We would never think to fill our bodies with only junk food, right? Heck no. We know that if we ate nothing but French fries and ice cream we would experience negative consequences like skin blemishes, weight gain and rotting teeth. But with mental junk food we don't see the physical consequences right away. When our minds are constantly filled with negativity and bad news, our minds begin to decay. That's why we need to develop a strong, Herculean-esque mind. Developing your mental muscles will give you the power to accompl...

by Jim Rohn Now, here's the second law that changed my life forever to understand sales and marketing. I learned the law of sowing and reaping. And in the law of sowing and reaping is also the story of the law of averages. Jot this down…the story of the sower. It comes from the Bible. I am an amateur on the Bible, but this is such a useful story. Here's what the story says, and take notes, because the drama's in the details. The sower was ambitious. Evidently, he was ambitious. When you read the whole story you'll conclude yes, this was an ambitious sower. Here was number two. He had excellent seed. The sower who sowed the seed had excellent seed. And the excellent seed could be an excellent opportunity, an excellent product, an excellent story. So we've got an ambitious sower with excellent seed. But now here are the rest of the details of the story. For your information, for the drama of your life, so you can understand things better, learning some of this is ho...

Dr. John C. Maxwell Maybe you know him. Meet Fearful Fred. He takes to risk like a cat takes to water. Fred is constantly undermining himself with a built-in fear of failure. Fearful Fred means well, but more than anyone on your team, he needs your support. Start by listening to him. Take Fred aside and encourage him to share his fears. Once you've identified his fears, try to help him determine why he has them. The next step is to help Fred tap into his desire to overcome his fears and succeed. As his leader, you must endeavor to help him harness that desire. As soon as Fred is ready to take the plunge, lead him in a project that will give him a win under his belt. To maximize Fred's chance of success, be sure to include the following elements: 1. Strategy: Begin by planning a project together; including Fred increases his ownership and confidence; including yourself insures success. 2. Structure: Once you have a plan, give Fred very specific guidelines to follow. Remember, F...

By Dwight Bain, Nationally Certified Counselor & Certified Life Coach; With Linda Riley, LMFT & Certified Sex Therapist Right now you know a woman working at least two jobs, (not counting parenting children and running a household), who is married to an unmotivated man. It may be a co-worker, a sister, a neighbor or friend at church, but you know this woman. Here’s what you don’t know. She’s hurting more now than she ever has before. Why? Because recession hurts the most when you’re married to an unmotivated man. These women have a major problem, they believe they really love the guy on the couch who just can’t or won’t keep a job. This causes another major problem, because they don’t want their children to suffer or do without the basics, like new shoes, school supplies or playing little league. And so they do the only thing they think they can do- they work, and work and then they work some more. Work is all they do because an average family needs 60-80 hours of income to ...