"I figured that if I said it enough, I would convince the world that I really was the greatest.” Muhammad Ali

One of the most powerful things you can do in your life to ensure a consistently positive emotional state is to use affirmations.

Affirmations are statements that you make to yourself that you wish to be true. This is different to a belief, which is a statement that you hold to be true. Affirmations don’t necessarily have to be believed to be effective, however a belief in the possibility of the affirmation certainly helps it be more effective.

Affirmations are underpinned by the belief that what we language, we create in our life. Affirmations can be positive or negative. A famous positive affirmation penned by the early 20th century pharmacist Émile Coué is “Every day in every way , I am getting better and better.” This is also known as the Coué Method. He also discovered what came to be known as the “placebo effect” where the positive expectation by a patient of a drug’s efficacy would be enough to effect a cure, even when there was no trace of the drug in the prescription.

Affirmations are what we focus on, consistently and persistently.

A negative affirmation is something that we are all guilty of to some degree – negative self-talk. It is estimated that we have something like 60,000 thoughts a day running through our heads, and that most of these are negative. If we use the premise that 90% of these thoughts are repetitive, and that of the 90% we can estimate that 70% of these thoughts are negative, that would mean that approximately 38,000 thoughts are repetitively negative, why there we have some powerful negative affirmations going on every day! Imagine if we could train our brains to turn those negatives into positives. Regardless of the nature of your affirmations, whether positive or negative, look around you and see the power of your creative mind - you are surrounded by what you have created first by your thoughts.

Closely related to affirmations are visualisations. A visualisation is simply an affirmation from which we make a picture in our mind. Visualisations have a very powerful effect on the unconscious mind, since the unconscious mind loves a story and a picture story is even more powerful. Since it is said that ‘a picture paints a thousand words’ you can see how much more potent a tool visualisation becomes when trying to effect a positive outcome.

And using the imagination is the only sure way to bypass the conscious critical faculty of the analytical mind, which will pick to pieces every affirmation and visualisation you enlist. It will analyse to death and tell you why you can't have the things you dream about, giving you 1000 reasons why they are nonsense, unrealistic and just plain stupid. (And by the way, 'unrealistic' is a favourite word of the conscious mind.) So by using the power of the imagination - pictures, words, feelings, smells and tastes - your unconscious mind is engaged fully in the experience of the senses, and will move you towards your desires. The unconscious mind does not know the difference between real and imagined. To demonstrate this, close your eyes and picture yourself in your kitchen. Don't think about being in your kitchen - use all your powers of imagination to see yourself there. Still in your imagination, take a lemon out of the fruit bowl and feel it's texture, its coolness, smell the scent of it's skin. Now cut the lemon in half and put it into your mouth - can you feel in reality your mouth watering? Your unconscious mind has prepared your mouth for the onslaught of the sour taste of the lemon and has produced saliva in reaction to the expectation of that event, even though it was only imagined!

Think about what you most desire, and start constructing the most detailed scene of it actually happening using all of your senses - immerse yourself in the experience as deeply as you can, and do this every day for 30 days. You are a formidable creator!

© Copyright Estelle Williams 2011

Whenever I meet someone new, I always ask "Who's your coach?" Invariably the answer comes back as "No-one - I don't need a coach". Which is a great answer and the one I most like to hear.

Because that means that the person is already creating clear and specific goals, has a solid action plan in place that is being tracked blow by blow, they have organised their own system to keep them accountable to their goals to ensure they follow through, and are able to identify any beliefs or blocks that arise on the way to their goals that are preventing their achievement. And that they do this in all major areas of their life such as their career, their health/weight, their relationships and their finances. OR they don't understand that a coach can help them to get all of these things in a lot faster and much more fun way than if they are left to their own methods.

Here are some other reasons one should consider being coached:

- We don't always have access to the big picture and so we can easily get stuck in one frame of reference in our life. You need an unbiased and objective view of your situation - it might feel nice if those close to us keep saying you're right and you're doing everything you can,  but playing it safe got you where you are now. Learn how to have fun and challenge yourself!

- Once you stop limiting yourself with thought patterns and belief systems that were not even yours to begin with, you free up an abundant source of energy to get you into the flow of life and start truly living!

- A coach isn't just interested in your dreams, they fully expect that you have them AND they can help you form a plan to get you there - they don't buy limitations!

- A coaching relationship offers trust, commitment, mutual learning, risk and, most importantly, belief. Having a coach who is committed 100% to your success and the belief in your ability to get it is priceless!

There have been many natural catastrophes that have occurred in recent months, on our shores and across the globe. Floods, earthquakes, tsunamis and civil wars that we see nightly on the news and which we feel compelled to offer some response to.

The proliferation of communication technologies ensure that we are confronted hourly with scenes of despair and destruction, and also of hope and miracles, and being human, we will have varying degrees of response to these events.

• Some people will let their government respond in the best way it knows how.

• Some people will make a donation to some support effort when prompted via television, social media, or direct appeal.

• Some people will donate blood, clothes, food or other practical items.

• Some people already support one or more charities who are involved in the disaster.

• Some people feel compelled to donate above and beyond what they are already giving to other charities.

• Some people donate their time and energy.

• Some people donate their prayers.

• Some people organise events and draw others into the drive to make a difference for those affected.

• Some people get on a plane and join in the effort on the ground to make a difference.

• Some people organise relief efforts and co-ordinate with government bodies to create the fastest and most effective response possible.

How you choose to respond to a catastophic event in the world is a mirror to how you are in your own country, city, neighbourhood, family, even your relationship. If you get upset by serious events, or you get angry, or motivated to help, or overwhelmed or sad because you can't - this is probably because that is how you have learned to respond to your world in stressful situations.

Can you select one of the responses above, or even come up with your own, and draw parallels to how you are in your life? There are no right or wrong answers here, no judgements or awards or recriminations, but it is an interesting exercise to enlighten ourselves about our behaviours!

And knowing what you know now, which response would you choose - for yourself and for the world?

© Copyright Estelle Williams 2011

Often what we tell ourselves about the events of our lives and the meaning we give our different life phases can affect not only the way we see ourselves, but also affect our future.

I know many people who believe their best years were when they were growing up, or when they were in their twenties. Others still believe that they reach their prime and have their best years in their thirties, and then after that it's all downhill. Still others think that they only reach their peak when they hit forty, and who knows what after that!

Money - how do you improve your relationship with it and what difference to your life will this make? Most of us have some degree of negative programming around money in our brains that has been deposited there by well-meaning family, friends and colleagues - would you agree? Who has heard that money doesn’t grow on trees, we are not made of money, that money is the root of all evil?

Anyone with ears would have heard in the last few years about the law of attraction – and what I am going to share with you today is a 5 step system that is said to attract more money to you, if you use all the steps as they are outlined. People who use this system have found that they attract more opportunities to improve their finances, while those who ignore these principles find it more of a struggle to get ahead but don’t know why. The system itself is goal-agnostic, which means you can take the basic principles and apply them to any or all of your goals, and in this post I have used each of these principles to demonstrate how they apply to attracting money.