DrJerm.com Blog – Life Transformation

Fri. 7/17/2009 (11:00 PM MST)

Our daughter Ellie turned two on May 12th 2009. She went with us to Wingers tonight for dinner. As our waiter brought out a bowl of popcorn, Ellie screamed in excitement, “Popcorn!”

Ellie’s excitement and enthusiasm for life are a tremendous example for me. How wonderful it is to see her consistently optimistic and excited. Whether it’s a bowl of popcorn, watching Ice Age the movie on DVD, or getting a glass of milk, Ellie excudes an enthusiasm that is contagious.

And this is a great help for me. What a daunting, yet exciting task I have before me. I now see myself as an author and a life coach. Now how many books have I written? How many workshops and seminars have I held? The answer to this is zero. But my state of mind is shifting. I have a clear vision of where I am going. The day will come when my books go into print. The day will come when I hold my first workshop/seminar. I am learning that the mind is an amazing thing. The thoughts we focus on have a funny way of becoming reality.

It is well known by those close to me that I finished 90 days of the P90X extreme fitness program and continue it to this day. My thoughts before I started were that my physical state was unacceptable. As I looked in the mirror, I saw someone who far exceeded the stature of what I currently was. I looked at pictures of individuals who achieved physical transformations. As I focused on this, I found a way everyday to work out in the mornings or evenings for an hour.

Evidence is extremely important for me. And my physical transformation is evidence to me that what the mind focuses on becomes reality if there is an intense desire, a smart plan, following successful persons, set forth to make it happen. But be careful! Focusing on negative aspects of life will cause you to set in motion undesirable things. Look at the foods, people, entertainment, and other areas of your life you delve into. Are any of these unsatisfactory to you? Keep note of how much time you focus on the unsatisfactory aspects. Now replace those thoughts/actions with satisfactory things. You will be amazed at the change in your life.

Some may say about my physical transformation to me, “Well that’s easy, you just bought the P90X and did the workouts, big whoop.” My response to that is two things. One: How many people do you know that followed through exactly with the P90X program for 90 days? The amount of people I know is 2 – and that is my wife and I. This isn’t to boast or say everyone must do it. No, not at all.

This brings me to point number two: Evidence is brought to light for me me that in order to achieve an extraordinary result, that an intense desire with a smart plan following those who are successful in the area you wish to succeed in is paramount. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are countless other strategies and techniques necessary to truly achieve a great result.

Were someone else to achieve the same physical transformation as me, I would know that they were focused on it intently, and following a specific plan of success. What I am saying is that I achieved a desired result. But it took a burning desire, a specific plan modeled after someone who found success and consistent reiteration and reciting of that plan.

Translating this into other areas of my life is the next big challenge. I seek to become an author and life coach. That’s all fine and good, but how am I going to put what I have learned about translating thoughts into reality to make this happen? The answer I believe is simple and includes the following:

• I will learn from the best authors and life coaches. I will do this in the way that I learned P90X from one of the world’s top fitness trainers, Tony Horton. I will study and learn their techniques and put them into practice for myself.
• I will create a specific strategy for writing, publishing, and marketing my books. I will use what successful authors have done as a guide. The first author as an example is Bobbie Christensen, a SUCCESSFUL author I had the privilege of listening to over a week ago now.
• I will learn from the most successful life coaches and the techniques they use. I know the two most successful life coaches of our time are Anthony Robbins and Wayne Dyer. I will then refine these techniques and add my own unique ideas and personality to create value.
• I will create a detailed schedule plan of action. I will complete all goals by their designated dates. I will use my talents and resourcefulness to achieve the results in areas I am currently inexperienced with, such as marketing my books and holding seminars.
• I will begin the formation of an experienced master mind group. This involves two parts.
• Part one is the further enhancement of my leadership skills. I will spend time honing and strengthening my leadership capabilities.
• Part two is the seeking out of individuals who excel in the following areas: marketing, public speaking, nutrition, physical fitness, psychology, and writing/editing.
• This last one is a big one for me, one I have never done before. That is to set a specific desired result I wish to achieve by a designated date. I have done this. When that date arrives, I will disclose the results of this experiment. There is no doubt in my mind that I will achieve what I am seeking out to do. I am putting to the test what I have learned, a pattern followed by successful men and women throughout the last century.

Does all of this sound overwhelming? Is it any wonder why it would be easier to just try and excel at my job as a web developer for Ancestry.com instead of pushing to become an author and life coach? This doesn’t mean I won’t excel at my Ancestry.com job – I continue to excel at it to this day.

My hope is that there are those reading this that will take pause and perhaps say inside, “maybe there is something more for me to achieve in life than what I am currently doing.” And that that person will begin the transformation that I am currently experiencing. And that is the essence of my desire to life coach. It is to help individuals align to a person of burning desire, proactively, confidence, success, and happiness in all areas of their life. And I continue learning and growing each day as I seek to do this and am excited for what the future will hold.

Mon. 7/6/2009 (4:23 PM MST)

I woke up with a splitting head ache (probably from a late night last night) and worked from home from my Ancestry.com web developer job – I am thankful they allow me doing this periodically.  For those of you who are wondering, I work at Ancestry.com on the search UI.  That’s UI as in user interface, as in the stuff you see while you are using the website, such as the search pages where you can type in first and last name and more, search results page, and the image viewer page, just to name a few.  I am blessed to have such a terrific form of employment and wonderful group of people to work with.

I am an optimistic person.  I believe in myself.  However, today was one of the few days where I had to fight the age old battle against discouragement and depression.   It happens to the best of us.  I am not immune to it.  Let me share with you why I was discouraged.

I am trying to find success in a field that I’ve only recently begun studying (as in just over a year now).  I am 31 years of age as of this blog post, and so I am somewhat of a late bloomer.  I look at the success of Anthony Robbins and Wayne Dyer as the benchmark to measure myself against.  This is a huge benchmark, and of course where I am now, it is nowhere near what they have achieved.

As I brainstormed my first service, I thought of personal appointments to individual homes.  I thought of offering personal training, nutritional guidance, pep talks, access to my website, a pamphlet of useful information, weekly emails, and more.  I thought about doing this as a $75.00 package, and for each individual visit after that, for just personal training and general guidance and advice for $50.00 an hour.  The discouraged part of me said, “Nobody is going to pay you – you have no experience, just forget it.”  As I began to dwell on the negative I really had to slap myself in the face hard.

This is how spiraling depression happens.  It’s something that runs in my family.  We get depressed for a while, then flickers of excitement and then back into depression.  Thankfully I’ve been able to reverse this to where I only have rare days where depression hits – and I can recognize it as in today.  What did I do?  I took action.  I went to work and stopped dwelling on what might go wrong or might not work.  I started focusing on how talented I am, and how there are so many people in the world who need my services and if I can just reach them, they will be benefited greatly.  That’s the key everyone.  Fight depression with action and enthusiasm.  Do it.  Do not spend another second in self pity.  Action and service trump depression.

And so it is, I continue to move forward with determination and faith.  I am excited for the opportunity and challenge that lay ahead!

I’m going to be keeping a journal log of what I am learning and thinking as I seek to develop more my business of life coaching. I believe it will prove useful to people who are seeking to progress in their lives. As such, here is the first entry!

Fri. 7/3/2009 (11:15 PM MST)

I’ve been at my computer for the last three hours now thinking and going over what it is I wish to accomplish. I see two main things. The first is my fictional series of books, of which I am fine tuning the rough draft of the first book. This is a book about a high school kid who finds passage to another world. The second thing is the pursuing of life coaching in all its forms. I see Anthony Robbins and Wayne Dyer as the two most successful individuals in this area for our time. They’ve certainly set a high bar.

I had the fortunate privilege to meet a gal by the name of Denise Hall who came to our company (Ancestry.com) last week. She is the CEO of Salus Solutions, a corporate wellness company. She showed us (about 50 people) her ‘AB Solution’ routine and talked about nutrition. I volunteered first for some of her abs moves and they were awesome. I contacted her later and went to do a personal training session with her in Salt Lake and this gal rocks! I knew from watching her speak to all of us that she would be someone that networking with would make a lot of sense. I feel fortunate to have met my first person to network with that is on a path of success in life. You can see Denise Hall’s website here. And if you live relatively near Salt Lake City, Utah and need a personal trainer, contact her from her website; you will be glad you did.

As for what I’m trying to accomplish, I’m sitting here now thinking of everything I need to do. I need to write better, speak better, create a better website, learn more, spend more time working, perfect myself more, plan more, organize more, network more, practice more, get more experience, and the list goes on with hundreds of things to do. I am thinking to myself, “my goodness, how can I accomplish this?” I am a very intelligent person. I am smart and capable, but I am not naïve. I know I cannot be successful by jury rigging together something, making it pretty, and packaging it up and selling it. I know I need to become a well known, sought after individual, who has perfected the art of writing, speaking, and understanding how to provide a more meaningful and fulfilling life to individuals.

This is overwhelming. But I know I must do it. I will do it. It is my destiny, what I was put on earth to do. As good and smart a software developer as I am, it is not my true destiny. And that is what I do for Ancestry.com currently. And make no mistake – it is a terrific job with wonderful people. It pays well and the health and other benefits are off the charts. The environment is relaxed. I feel extremely fortunate to be there. But it is not enough. An infinite force is pulling at me, and I know I must follow where it takes me. And so I am taking my ideas for life coaching and planning. And writing my fictional book series. And doing the best I can, one day at a time.