Preface From: The Portable Coach George Carlin is against positive thinking. It sounds to him like a bad idea, and he's also sure it won't work. (Even if it does, he figures it's probably really hard to do.)I agree with George. No one should spend their time trying to think positive thoughts. We've all got better things to do.And yet, by this time, you've probably once or twice taken a long look at your struggles in life, career, or personal relationships and thought, "There's got to be a better way." A better way to have a nice house, a real life, a great relationship, a business of my own, answers to the problems I have now -- but without being fried by overwork and stress.
I've got a positive thought for you right now. There definitely is a better way.It's not about feeding your brain lovely bouquets of "good thoughts." It's not about being the meanest shark in the corporate sea. Or any other kind of self-pressuring prescription that sounds halfway-convincing but requires huge effort, or else doesn't work at all.Before saying what it is about, I should probably tell you something of what I'm about: The starting point on my resume is "certified financial planner." So I began professional life with an emphasis on money skills. But my clients, I soon realized, wanted much more than knowing what stocks to buy.
They wanted to acquire much more in life than wealth itself. And I knew I wanted to expand myself to deliver what they needed.Very recently, the Philadelphia Inquirer called me "the patriarch of the personal-coaching movement." Which sounds very graybeard. But I did begin a personal coaching practice in 1982, as an evolution of the work I was already doing for clients. Coaching was a big step, involving money plus career plus personal growth, all pulled together to help my clients become stronger and better and more successful in a well-rounded, lasting way. As far as I can tell -- and I have wide access to information sources -- I was the first person to start this type of practice.Within six years, I founded Coach University to teach others how to thrive in -- and contribute to -- the field I'd created.
It was the first school of its kind. Now there are at least ten in the United States alone, though CoachU remains by far the largest and best known. And it works. CoachU-trained people share great new success stories with me almost every day. Like the man who, in the space of three months, went from welfare recipient to earner of a projected annual income of $60,000. In this book, you will read a number of success stories, and they are all true.In 1992, my thinking began to evolve a little further. What if a person could consistently attract the good things in life -- opportunities, strong finances, rewarding relationships, really useful and desirable material things, self-satisfaction -- instead of striving, scuffling, or otherwise struggling for them? What if a person could learn how to become more attractive? (In the sense defined above, not in surface glamor -- unless you want that, too.
) What if all the squabbles and annoyances in most people's personal and professional lives could be subtracted, to be replaced by big expanses of free and/or productive time?That questioning drew me to create, and delineate, the material in this book.The Portable Coach is about 28 thought-expanding, surprisingly practical, and highly effective principles, linked to each other like facets on a diamond. These principles will help you shape your life, career, and relationships in the most self-satisfying and profitable way possible. Just look into a single facet, any one that catches your eye. Enjoy it. The deeper you look, the more you'll see parts of all the other facets emerge. You'll intuitively know which one you want to look at next. And you'll evolve toward a more attractive life.
More and more, the good things i.