Weird 4 You

Sliding, butt down through thick sludge. The caked-on guuuuk sticks to everything. Damp and slimy, covered head to toe, my trips lately into proper depression have been yucky.

Among all the goodness and light, signposts of progress and growth in my life, I can relate with Churchill, who referred to his “black dog” of depression that followed him around.

The irony is not lost on me, that I literally carry around a black dog (Roxy) in the back of my car, almost all the time 🙂

So anyway, the yucky-ness of the day had me exhausted by noon. My mind just packed full of oozing and disgusting thoughts of how crappy I’ve let myself become, my floundering career, my empty bank-accounts, my this and my that, blah-butty, blah, blah and blah!

This isn’t tooooo unusual, kinda comes and goes. Maybe like a lot of folks out there…

So, my mind was a sloppy mess, and sleep came easy.

A mid-day nap, today, may have been the end of an era, and to remind myself of this, I’m posting up my afternoon awakenings, for you, for me, for future reference…

So the nap lasted an hour, and when I woke somehow, some way, not by my own accord, the afternoon looked, smelled, tasted and even breathed a little lighter and sweeter.

A still small voice spoke to me in tiny whispers throughout the rest of the day…

“You’re too focused on YOU” 

“You think all your problems are about You”

“Your issues and career and bank account and life are Not For You”

“You got out of debt, for You. You started this coaching thing for You. You’re quiet and hiding from your own possibilities, because you think it’s all about You…”

“You’re scared shitless, because you’re worried about what people think about You”

“You’re forgetting to focus your attention on Helping Others”

WOW. double. triple. quadruple… WOW.

That small voice, was God. I know because my entire being was lighter, every time it spoke. Lighter as in my mind, my body, and yes, my Soul, was being fed a Holy Truth.

Here ends the blogging based on my thoughts, my insights, my, my and my whatevers…

Now, Folks God is Good, and he likes to use people to spread His help around to others.

I am not flat out broke. I am not at my complete wits end. I have been blessed and blessed, drenched in His love and grace and favor upon favor.

I am in a highly unique and wonderful moment, in which I have watched and attended the funeral of my old life, grieved it’s loss, been lost in a new world, and just now re imagining a life that can encompass a vastly larger sense of purpose.

I’ve been racing so hard at certain goals, based on what I wanted, that I’ve burned out my motor. Then lost at sea, drifting can be dangerous and scary. Thank God, now I am being shown that all I have to do is raise my sails and let His winds, blow me where I’m really supposed to be going. It’s not about Me, It’s not up to Me, In fact, Me is irrelevant.

So weirdforgood world…

A new chapter begins: WeirdforYou, At Your Service.

What do You want? What do You need? Where are there places that You need to be heard? What questions does your black dog bark in the back of your mind? Is it anything I can assist you with?

I have some credentials:

I’ve been constructed with a creative imagination that may be of use to you.

I can tell you that my “High I” natural traits can include: Creative problem solver, Great leader, convincing spokesperson, Motivates and encourages others to achieve, Negotiates conflicts by taking positive action.

I’ve dealt with lots of death and family tragedy. This might of service to someone who is going through difficulty, and wants a presence that will not panic and bail, when the emotional-going gets tough.

I’ve been blessed with extra time to learn about a ton of subjects, mostly involving personal development and self-improvement. I could probably recommend authors and experts that I’ve read and even conversed with, who’s material could help your specific situation.

With a lot of experience in graphics and design, product printing, computer networking, creative writing, marketing, blogging, and yes, even Dave Ramsey’s methods that, with small changes, over time, can eliminate fear from our financial situations. With these skills, I may be of some use to You, or someone you know.

I have lots of technology at this robust home office, I even have plenty of time to spare. I have no complaints that are real, and lots of energy and brain-power to share…

See, I had backed myself into a depressive corner with my own heavy-weight boxer thoughts, then God touched those thoughts with the lightest little whisper, and they were “poof”, gone. I am quite thankful, and ready to serve.

Consider this blog an invitation. I’ve got resources to keep me going financially. This is not a plea for your customer-ship. Simply put, I can serve, right now, just as I am, with the skills and abilities I have, and I intend to do so. You don’t have to trust me on this, Test Me.

I may have crossed a threshold; I hope I have. It won’t ever matter however, if I keep this all to myself. It’s not for me. It could be through me. It will only be because of Him.

Call My Cell 785-218-6134

Email Me at aaron@truenorthffc.com

Or stop by my house: 102 Main, Princeton, KS 66078

And answer this question: “How May I Serve You.”

I’m ready to get to work 🙂

Thank You, Sincerely,

Aaron Nichols

Chump Change

It’s Me!! That’s the answer!

Wow, what a crack up!!

The epiphanies that pop, sizzle, crackle and spark when on the phone with a great coach are just magically freakin’ common sensical!

At least tonight they were 🙂

I’ve been blogging lately about this step I’ve taken to hire ma’self a gosh-darn world-class coach, and I want to tell you all exactly what I’m getting out of the experience.

Hey you’ve stayed on this roller-coaster this long; I plan on there being a little fun along with the terrification!

Tonight was my second call with Steve Chandler, and we had time to really dig into the format and structure of the services I plan to offer in my new and improved practice.

You want to know the inside track on what I’ve been missing for the last year and half??

  • Make it easy!
  • Make it fun!
  • Make it cheap to try out and get a feel for.
  • Give lots of value and really helpful tools on the very first meeting.
  • Be myself, AND (and this is the big one!) Focus on all my mistakes!!

Yup!

That’s the part of this scenario that I’ve been really and truly depressingly hung up on.

Instead of hiding my mistakes, trying to paint a perfect picture for people, I now have permission to spread the Newsflash!!! that I’ve screwed up A LOT!!!

YAY!!!!!

Here’s the deal folks. I’m now hard at work, putting together an EFFECTIVE and EASY program that can POWERFULLY transform lives, with little small changes…

Small Change after Small Change, like ya’ know, 5 cents at a time, like Nichols…

HAHAHAHHHAAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHA!

okay, sorry, that was a little overboardo!

This post is not meant to be a commercial for Steve Chandler, or a teaser just to get you to buy into my new and upcoming Coaching programs.

In fact, neither one of these things needs commercials. Steve has plenty of business, and my new program will too… because they work, because they’re effective and they radically can alter your inner stance from a place of fear and worry, to love and optimism!

The giddy proof is in my vocabularitous pudding tonight!

As you’ll see soon, the key ingredient that Steve has helped me embrace is that ALL my many years of financial and personal mistakes, my tragic levels of stupidity and misguided, folly-full, just-plain-dumb-ass decisions are my best tools to communicate to people, that I’ve been there, and done that, when it comes to financial mistakes.

And I’m here to express tonight, that by my open admissions, I invite discussion and relationships and real progress to occur, with other folks out there, who (oops) didn’t always make perfect decisions either!

No judgement from me, no stories or numbers or stacks of bills can scare me. I’ve already seen all that, in my own home, even recently! I’m in no way a perfect specimen of financial health, I’m not a millionaire, I am someone who used to be a lot worse off, and made some Small Changes, and over time, improved my situation.

I know there are people out there who have real issues going on; I have a sincerely compassionate and loving heart for them. And so…

I’m declaring my commitment to making powerful transformation easy & attainable.

And I hope my weirdforgood family will continue this ride, it’s about to get real real fun!

Sincerely,

Aaron Nichols
Find. Focus. Create.
Choose Your True North

Gettin’ “It”

Thousands of words I’ve read. Hundreds of hours of video I’ve watched. PDF’s, .mp3’s, workshops, webinars, E-books too. I get email updates of blogs. I’m registered on several community websites. Magazines, hard-cover books, pamphlets and home-made folders and binders full of information. All of it, I devour in order to help me understand Success.

Oh there are sub-genres and specific niche items too. I am really in love with learning, with digging deeper, with growing and stretching and seeing new possibilities. You all know that I’ve made radical life transformations in the last few years…

A lot of that progress has to do with things I’ve learned, and been taught by great mentors and masters and leaders; some ancient, some cutting edge.

And then last week I had my first live coaching session. Wow. One hour on the phone and I took six pages of notes. My mind was reeling for days; mulling over the ways to implement everything we discussed. It was fantastic, scary as hell and did crystallize one very true and tough pill to swallow.

In fact it was pointy…

“The Point.”

And that is what tonight’s blog is about. I can save you the hours of scouring the web for articles, .mp3’s and free pdf downloads. You won’t need TED talks or blogs to follow, if you  have this one thing clarified.

What is your point?

What is that one short sentence? Maybe even just a verb and a noun, that explains the exact thing you want in your end result?

You see, during my hour long, highly enlightening conversation with my coach, Steve Chandler. He did a tricky thing. When I would tell him a story about what I was doing, and the result I was getting, in hopes that he would encourage my efforts and assure me that I just needed to keep trying; that wasn’t typically his response.

Many times, he simply referred back to it. To the Point.

In my case, as I have enrolled in the Coaching Prosperity School, which is designed to offer coaches all the tools and training it takes to build a successful six-figure coaching practice, they really only have one point. And in relation to this conversation with Steve, it has now become my one point.

Create Clients. 

See, I’ve been “trying” all the ways I know how to inspire people to want to work with me, ways that I’ve learned online through podcasts and go-to-meetings and workbooks and all that other stuff, and guess what? Reading all that stuff, completing the workshops and courses, even building a website and handing out business cards doesn’t “Create Clients.”

So, back to the drawing board, back to suggestions. Time to break my routines, build new ones. Get out of my comfort zone, where the real progress begins, with this one clear end in mind. Time to figure out that when I keep doing, what I been doing, I’ll keep getting what I been getting 🙂

His suggestions were fantastic, insightful and I believe will prove helpful to my end goal.

But it only works that way, because we started with “The Point.”

I’ve had 6 deep conversations this week, with men I admire, respect, trust and believe to be capable of setting the world on fire, if they so choose to. In every conversation, I was practicing my coaching conversation skills to encourage free and open sharing that will result in us finding out what really matters to these men, and how we can make steps together to get them the ultimate results they’re working so hard for…

And yet, because these conversations had a less formal nature, because I kinda sprung it on ’em, because I can’t always pop out this answer perfectly myself, when I would slide into the middle of our talk, a question like “What is the Point, we’re driving at here?” There wasn’t an immediate, confident, clearly defined two-word answer response. In fact, some expressed “I don’t know.”

Well… Heck-a-mile!

Would you believe, that I took the career leap of a lifetime, and have been doing this somewhat insane version of self reliance in the freelance world, without a clearly defined “Point” myself?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Yes, I meant to do that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (the punctuation that is 🙂

Somewhere along the line, in life, it wasn’t explained clearly, to me, or these other 6 Highly Respectable Men, that we need a single “Point” to be clearly defined in how we are conducting ourselves in any given endeavor.

I think we could have multiple points, for different parts of life, but again, the simpler the better. When trying to figure out the answer to my career conundrum, or the different real-life, really understandable and really important situations that I’ve been discussing with these guys, we’re kinda spinning our wheels without a “Point”.

We can spend a lot of time talking about symptoms and causes of our problems. We can discuss how one technique could come across different than another. We can rationalize why we need A, B or C, and not D, E or F in our life, but none of that discussion is really making progress unless we know what the “Point” is.

The word “Purpose” could be transplanted in here as well. Although, it sounds more like a phrase or sentence, maybe a small paragraph that has some grandiosity to it, so maybe just “The Point” is better.

When it comes to success, or financial fitness, or health, or career, or even spirituality, I feel like the very first thing that needs to come before all the hard work is this one little piece, that may be a naturally implanted God-given known-truth in our life, or maybe it will be something we search for, for years. Either way, I now am starting to see, that all the progress comes, after we discover, determine, choose, receive or invent, Our “Point”

All other advice and counsel relates to that. Steve (my coach) told me his Point was to Help Me Create Clients. Okay, that works for me!

A couple closing thoughts. Our Point, isn’t Society’s Point. It isn’t something we’ve been sold by an organization, or something that was handed down to us from someone else. Not a parent, a teacher, a boss or even Pastor, can tell us what our Point is… we gotta figure that one out ourselves.

When we then adjust and adapt ourselves to start heading not in the directions of what we’ve been doing, or some new technique, but a direction that gets us closer to the Point, then we’re about to see some miracles happening! Combine yourself with some other people who’ve decided that their Point and your point are similar or identical and watch out! Really super-huge mega-fantastic things are on your horizon.

And when you reach your goals, materialize your Point and are a huge success… (or whatever size you chose to be 🙂 Then you get to write blogs, and books, post videos, host webinars and teach everybody all the unique techniques that took you there…

And, you even tell them your Point too, but I wonder, if it will get lost in all the digi-trash??

I’ve said before, I love the book Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. He expounds deep truths, he recognizes and teaches attitudes and actions of greatness, and he wrote the book as a journal, as Notes to Myself…

Now… it’s time that I work on clarifying more of my Points… It’s gonna be fun!

You know, I want to hear from you, what your thoughts are, and what Big Points you’ve set course toward in your life. However, if my point was to make a blog that had tons of reader response, I’d be a failure and have to give this sucker up 🙂 Instead, I’ll just understand that since you’re here again, there must be something worthwhile on this screen that keeps you comin’ back for more. So thanks again for stoppin’ by 🙂

Take Care Y’all! G’night!

Sincerely,

Aaron Nichols

Hooking into a Whale

Salty wind whips splashes of brine across your face. The 25 foot open vessel creaks, groans and slaps water while the six other men row as quietly as they can…

Land is thousands of miles away; it’s an eerily anticipated intense moment…

Your destiny is right in front you. It’s adventure, wealth and possible death in the form of this unsuspecting 60-foot-long, 45-ton sperm whale.

It’s your turn now, you steady your legs, grip the wooden harpoon handle, raise it high and with all your force in one full-body motion, you heave that hooked blade into the monster.

That’s when all hell breaks loose!

——————————————————–

I watched a tragically enthralling story unfold on PBS tonight; Into the Deep, America, Whaling and the World. The documentary covered the maniacally courageous sailors routinely putting their lives on the line, in pursuit of wealth, adventure and the main petroleum product that built the industrial age of early America: Whale Oil.

It was a great program, and I especially loved how they explained this most critical, most tense, most personal and terrifying point in the hunt.

This Moment of Crisis, as the first harpoon was launched, was the point of no return.
It was certain chaos!

And I was reminded of similiar moments just last week, as I affixed a gaze on my own monster. With tense breaths, I pondered whether or not to launch a possibly deadly harpoon. This journey into self employment, personal coaching and freelance design work has certainly resembled an ugly deep sea monster at times…

I told you last week that I intended to invest in myself in 2012; that I intended to lean into my faith and make some big decisions on getting help with my career.

Well I did it! It was only hours after posting my blog last week, that I cut a check.

I hired my first big-time coach 🙂

It was a serious, sizable amount, and it came out of my Emergency Fund.

Wow. For those of you who don’t know, my debt-freedom and journey to self employment has so far been a solo-act, scraping to learn the hard way and backed by my locked-and-stocked, never-to-be-touched, for-any-reason-whatsoever, Emergency Fund.

I have survived 1.5 years in a barely fluctuating and severely slight income stream compared to my previous 10 year career. And I have done that, while living debt-free without touching the Emergency Fund. It has been an exercise in extreme frugality.

AND, just like the sailors, who where way out in the sea in their little crafts chasing big game; only one of 3 things is about to happen.

As they pointed out on the documentary, once the harpoon is launched. Chaos Ensues!

Scenario #1 – By stroking your blade deep into the giant; you piss it off. It feels the sting and goes after the source of the pain. It crashes and smashes your boat to bits out in the middle of the wide open ocean. Forget the spoils of your hard work… just try and survive.

Scenario #2 – Startled, the whale dives. It takes its mighty strength and valuable oil down, down, down. You may never see that animal again. Your gear hopefully breaks. At best you could be left with only your boat, your men and broken tackle to go and try to find another, easier to handle beast.

Scenario #3 – WAHOOO!!!!

Actually the most common reaction of a harpooned whale was to explode across the surface. With the whalers in tow, it could rocket through the water for hours. Sometimes called the Nantucket Sleigh Ride, the hunters where hoping to see their prey blasting safely away from them, as it wore down it’s own power, minute-by-minute. Finally, when the whale had it’s last hurrah and was completely exhausted, they killed and harvested it.

This high-risk, high-reward lifestyle was obviously not for the faint-of-heart.

I’d guess you can imagine which of these scenarios I’m hoping my 2012 relates to. With the moment of action behind me, I’m now about to find out if the ensuing chaos, will lead me on the exciting, rewarding and fulfilling adventure that I initially set out for, over a year and a half ago, or not.

I feel good about my odds, just as the sailors must have, to keep chasing the monsters of the seas. Just like them, I don’t have all my eggs in this one basket. I still am blessed to have reserves available to keep me afloat. But from where I’m looking, the opportunity is all ahead of me, along with tons of hard work.

See, just as when the sailors seized their bounteous catch, their work had just begun. They used the same tow line to row the carcass back to the main ship and they had 3 days of backbreaking labor ahead of them.

I’m looking forward to the posts I’ll get to write about all the hours and hard work I spend helping people, organizations and businesses to achieve their goals, and pile up heaps of momentum toward reaching fantastic results.

As I am coached by one of the best, I’ll pass on all that I learn; guaranteed.

I invite you to share your Moments of Crisis, when you intentionally made a risky move, while chasing your dreams, and how it turned out; hopefully for the better!

Thanks for being here with me once again at www.weirdforgood.com – Your continued readership has literally towed me through some murky waters lately. I appreciate you.

There will be new information coming soon on the improved version of:

True North – Coaching & Consulting Services
Find. Focus. Create.

Sincerely,

Aaron Nichols

“I creatively design solutions that materialize ideas and dreams; improving the lives of people, growth in organizations and prosperity in business.”