Win Harper | Life and Leadership Coach

“Be the change you want to see in the world.”  Gandhi

Today is Martin Luther King Day and tomorrow Barack Obama becomes our president.  Martin Luther King gave one the most important and greatest speeches ever.  He had a dream about change.  Two years ago, I used his speech as an exercise in one of my leadership classes.  I played a recording of the speech and then asked the students to write a paragraph starting with the words, “I have a dream….”  It was a wonderful moment as the students gave themselves permission to have a dream, and to put it on paper.  Why not take 5 minutes and do the exercise right now?  What would you write?

President Kennedy was elected when I was a senior in High School.  The world was changing and he gave us hope.  Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”  48 years later, Barack Obama promises change and gives us hope.  This is a pivotal point in our history, and change is coming.  It always does. 

When you read Gandhi’s quote at the top of this page, what did you feel?  What do you think he meant?  What change do you want to see in the world?  What thoughts, values, and behaviors do you want to see in yourself and in others? 

How do you affect lasting change in yourself?  Well, you need to focus on what you want, or another way of saying that is you need to take AIM AT what you want.  And here is what I mean by A.I.M. A.T:

A is for affirmations.  Repeating a phrase over and over again changes your subconscious beliefs.  Changing beliefs changes your behavior.  This is simply positive self talk, and these are two affirmations I use: “I like myself” and “I use my time well.” 

I is for imaging or visualizations.  The subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is vividly imaged.  Remember a time when you were walking down a dark road and you heard a rustling sound and thought it was a bear.  Your whole body responded with an increase in your heart beat, sweating, and your fight or flight response kicks in.  Then you discover that it was only a squirrel. Athletes use visualizations as mental rehearsals.

M is for modeling.  Find someone you admire or someone who has the qualities or does the things you want to do, and act like them.  What are their values? What are their challenges and how did they overcome them?  One way to use this technique is when you have a decision you want to make.  If Gandhi is your role model, you can ask yourself, “What would Gandhi do?”

A is for “act as if…”  You know what you want to do and how to do it.  Now, “act as if” you have already accomplished these things, and made the changes in your life.  “Act as if” you are successful; “act as if” you can speak in front of groups; “act as if” you are the change you want to see in the world.  Now some people will say, I can’t “act as if” because that is not being authentic.  Well, my response is that you are probably acting as if you can’t do something, and that is not true either; so why not act as if you can.  What is the worse that can happen?

T is for teaching.  You become what you teach.  A powerful way to learn anything is to immediately teach someone how to do what you just learned.  Who can you teach the above techniques to today?

Now go back to what you wrote in the “I have a dream….” exercise, and A.I.M A.T. your dream.