Minor Changes Major Results: Strategy One: Beyond Positive Thinking

By Gisele Guenard

MINOR CHANGES – MAJOR RESULTS ®, is for people who want positive experiences to be their normal, without moving mountains to get there.

In a how-to guide, rich with true stories, master coach Gisèle Guénard walks you through MINOR CHANGES – MAJOR RESULTS ® Strategy One: Beyond Positive Thinking, the proven foundation for happiness and resilience, abundance and success. In 8 short chapters, Gisèle will help you immediately begin to:
• ID and dis-empower limiting beliefs stopping you from getting what you want.
• Gain more freedom and move your life in a direction you'll get excited about, one you love.
• Adopt evidence-based methods to attract the positive outcomes you long for and deserve.
• Stop being an occasional success at the 'mind-body-spirit' thing, and live a truly satisfying life.

With MINOR CHANGES – MAJOR RESULTS ®, you'll understand how you got to where you are, what self-care feels like and how to attract improvement in any situation. Master your thoughts and create the good life, the way truly happy, successful people have done since recorded time.

Finances, Occupation, Health, Relationships... here are the tools needed to manifest positive change in any area.

"We are living in a time of great opportunity. Reach for things some believe impossible, starting with changing the way you think. This is the most important action any of us take, every day we are fortunate to be among the breathing," Gisèle writes. "This book is a guide to support you in making Minor Changes you can sustain, giving you the power to make the best of any opportunity and thrive with Major Results."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Apr 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9780228829188

Gisele Guenard

An award-winning positive change leader, Gisèle Guénard holds a Master of Education/Sociology as well as a Bachelor of Science/Nursing degree. Founder of VisionarEase & associates, she is a Certified Professional Life Coach and trained in Non-Profit Governance. She has coached thousands of individuals, staff teams, women's groups, board and senior leadership teams, health care students and patients, seminar and conference participants, all seeking positive change. Her philosophy? The way to change anything, is to change the thinking that got us there.

Book preview

Dedication

~~

In honour of my Mother

I was inspired to begin writing about positive strategies around the time of my Mother’s death, in the fall of 2006. She was a solution-focused, glass half full deeply faith-driven woman. Though this book does not have a religious/faith focus, I honour her here, and am grateful for her influence on my life.

Through two world wars, illness, widowhood, the untimely death of her firstborn son and many of her eleven siblings, as well as the isolation of late-life blindness, my mum always turned her thoughts back to faith in God and the saints, especially her favourite, Ste Thérèse, towards optimism and hope. She is known for her philosophy of life and even in her final days, she reminded us that…

There is always something to look forward to.

Yvonne Rose Guénard, 1912-2006

Table of Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Forward

Introduction

Chapter 1: Fundamentals

Chapter 2: Healthy Thinking

Chapter 3: DECIDE

Chapter 4: ENERGIZE!

Chapter 5: KNOWING

Chapter 6: The Power of the Written Word

Chapter 7: Intention = Energy

Chapter 8: Business, Workplace & Leadership

Conclusion and Testimonials

About the Author

Appendix

Acknowledgements

~~

Thank you, all!

•Husband John, for your rock-solid faith in me

•Daughters/super-moms Holly and Sarah, for your support and strategy-testing

•My professional colleagues, especially my tribe-sister Diana, for your contributions to this work

•Our amazing and inspiring positive change clients

•All who contribute to the positive change movement, past, present and future

Minor Changes - Major Results went into production at the start of the 2020 Covid19 Pandemic. I decided to keep the book’s content as is, knowing it will serve you well. There are strategies in this book applicable to all situations, including highly challenging ones. Also of interest, I previously authored a book titled Help - Healthy Thinking in Times of Trouble. Please contact me at for an e-copy of Help, at visionarease.com.

Stay well, and thank you for being part of the positive change movement.

Gisele

Forward

Authentic happiness comes from identifying and cultivating your most fundamental strengths

and using them everyday in work, love, play and parenting.

Dr. Martin Seligman, Founder of Positive Psychology

~~

I respectfully open this writing with a recommendation about two important and related books. The first is by best-selling author, Dr. Martin Seligman, Authentic Happiness, Learned Optimism. He is the genius behind the new field of Positive Psychology and knows a thing or two about thinking. I have recommended his work to clients for over a decade, and I encourage you to explore it as well. Challenges are inevitable. However, there are very specific thought strategies which can help us thrive, regardless of challenges. These are largely modifications in our thinking habits, which have significant effective, proven impact on our lives over time. The choices we made up until now brought you and I to where we are today. By making effective minor changes, we can greatly improve our life experience.

The second book I recommend is by holocaust survivor, Dr. Edith Eva Eger, who wrote it at the age of 90, The Choice – Embrace The Possible. Oprah Winfrey shared that she was forever changed by Dr. Eger’s story. I include this recommendation because as with lighter fare such as this book, it is challenging to imagine how thought practices you will explore here could be of value in times of true hardship. And yet they are. These strategies can generate positive change and get us through tough times. No book can present all available personal development strategies, and so I include recommendations from other positive change leaders which I and our clients have found effective.

We all make mistakes and regrettable decisions. Some of us are born with genetically determined conditions or subjected to birth trauma and childhood illness. We don’t fully understand why some people develop certain cancers and others do not. It’s part of the human condition to suffer in small and/or significant ways. No one living or dead has dodged that reality 100%. I don’t know of anyone who hasn’t experienced some challenge or trauma. Part of this is related to the fact that others’ paths may intersect with ours, triggering joy, pain and everything in between. For those who intentionally caused you pain, take heart: whatever we put out comes back to us, and that law is applied to all. The efforts of those who do good with what we now know, will always, eventually prevail.

However, there are instances where no self-driven personal development strategy alone will suffice to address an actual trauma or mental health challenge. Post-partum depression, suicidal ideation and many other conditions require the intervention of primary health care, allied professionals and usually, prescribed medication along with therapy. Your nurse practitioner, physician or other regulated health professional will guide you, and probably suggest various healthy thinking strategies as appropriate, often in collaboration with other counsellors, therapists or peer support groups.

This book is a personal development guide, and the foundational strategy at the basis of the ‘MINOR CHANGES – MAJOR RESULTS ® (MCMR) Coaching that works’ approach, ‘Strategy One: Beyond Positive Thinking (BPT)’. As a Certified Professional Life Coach from a nursing, teaching and executive background, I have developed this approach through many years of coaching a wide variety of individuals. We now have a large bank of positive feedback from people eager to share their transformation stories, based on their having applied one or more of the strategies we teach.

The MCMR ® approach is comprised of Five Transformational Elements:

1.Strategy One: Beyond Positive Thinking (BPT)

+

Positive Change Strategies in the Big FOHR key life satisfaction areas:

2.Finances

3.Occupation

4.Health

5.Relationships

From students seeking guidance in career choices, to CEOs of large corporations, I have been honoured to coach individuals, teams, boards and staff, who come to us with a variety of needs. In so doing, I’ve found that most people are interested in exploring strategies from the fields of positive psychology, success approaches and what we call ‘mind body spirit’. Within this book’s selection of BPT strategies, we included a professional take on law of attraction, the Attract It approach. If you prefer other terminology for this healthy mindset-based approach, great! It’s all the same, used across the globe, and it works.¹

With a growth mindset, you can learn to generate positive change as part of your day-to-day life, well into old age. Evidence-backed skills far beyond positive thinking will help build confidence for you and spark transformation as well as success. Some people experience life with an inner belief that events happen to them and they have little control. The rest of us know we have a lot of control and are much, much happier than they: it’s all about the minor changes we are willing to make. Yes, you will need to take action: however, you’ll find yourself struggling less, and enjoying more.

I care and I want you to succeed. A Registered Nurse at barely nineteen, I vividly remember many of my patients from 40 years ago. In the same way, I care deeply about you being able to enjoy the good things this world has to offer, and I look forward to hearing from you, even many years from now. I care that you learn the strategies I adopted, which took my life in new and satisfying directions. I care that you learn how to be resilient in the face of life’s challenges. I care that you become skilled at creating positive change in all aspects of your life.

We are living in a time of great opportunity. Reach for things some believe impossible, starting with changing the way you think. This is the most important action any of us take, every day we are fortunate to be among the breathing. Perfectionism breeds overwhelm and procrastination: do not wait until you feel you have these strategies mastered before taking action towards being a BPT thinker.

Success Tip – This book is jam-packed with ideas and strategies. I recommend you use a notebook as you go along, and that you create a personal development plan.

Now let’s get started.

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¹ See Appendix for other MINOR CHANGES – MAJOR RESULTS™ coaching areas

Every word we speak and every action we perform affects our future.

Pema Chodron

Introduction

The only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams

and our willingness to work hard for them.

First Lady, Michelle Obama

~~

What type of action does it take to achieve your dreams? We can’t even have dreams or goals, without first being able to imagine them. Master the effective, consistent use of positive mental skills in addition to imagining, and live a life others only dream of. This is your most important work. All other work, and yes, some of it is hard, will be so much more do-able as well as enjoyable. You will find the energy and resources to do what First Lady, Michelle Obama speaks of in our opening quote.

Positive thinking alone will not do it. Hence the Beyond element in Strategy One. You need strategies and usually, new habits, to help you create, co-create or attract more of the results you want, or something better. Learning to use these strategies, one Minor Change at a time, builds a foundation of knowledge, skills and habits which happy people use to create the lives we want. And yes, repetition is needed for us to learn and eventually master effective thought processes. You’ll see concepts repeated in this book and want to re-visit sections many times. Bob Proctor, who has had global impact in the field of success, largely based on law of attraction, has read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill countless times, and at 80, still reads from it every day, as he has for over forty years. He is still running a massively successful coaching business and travels world-wide sharing his insight.

We use a variety of terms for effective thinking, depending on the context, such as BPT, success strategies, healthy thinking, etc… Developing new habits is possible for anyone with the ability to access the material in this book and others. However, any change to deeply ingrained habits requires will power, and we will address this early on. As well, one of the greatest obstacles to success is the inability to focus. You will develop this skill as a natural part of the transformation you have chosen to undertake.

This is a book of actionable knowledge. Whether you wish to improve your health, relationships, finances, propel your career or business to success or help develop your organization, you will benefit most by approaching it in this manner:

1.Enjoy a complete first reading, pencil in hand. Make margin notes and circle points of interest. Messy is good.

2.Google any points you’re inspired to know more about, such as references to other teachers we refer to.

3.Try out each strategy or exercise as you move through the book.

4.Incorporate them into your day-to-day life and begin creating new habits.

5.Make notes about what you want that shows up, and what you do not want, that is now disappearing from your reality.

6.Discuss the book contents with a like-minded individual or group.

7.Go through the book a second time and increase your commitment to your new way of living.

What about religious or spiritual practices? Whether you believe in a higher power or not, BPT strategies will support your efforts towards a better life. There is no contradiction between any religious belief and the coaching approaches we teach. In fact, they are complementary. I sat in church years ago, with the same physicians and specialists I worked with on an acute care hospital ward. I know people of science who have profound beliefs in various religions. And how interesting it is, when the conversation turns to the similarities in teachings amongst various religious texts, positive thinking and success theory. Many of the most successful businesspeople I work with have strong spiritual connections with Source, as some now call it.

You’ve probably heard or read current and past world leaders quoted on their belief in a higher power. From Dr Martin Luther King, to Queen Elizabeth: from President Obama’s prayer breakfast speeches, to Gabrielle Bernstein’s talk of the higher power, angels and family members helping her from the other side, it is my guess most leaders believe in something bigger than themselves. I also believe and have experienced help, from what I call God, Angels, Sainte Thérèse and friends, as well as family members beyond the veil. In fact, I could write a book about the amazing events I have experienced through what I consider help from these entities. I would have to title it, You can’t make this stuff up!

Whether you believe in a higher power or not, is up to you and is not required to succeed in life, as successful agnostic people would share. Perhaps this guy sums it up best: I think it makes sense to believe in God, but exactly what decision in your life you make differently because of it, I don’t know. Bill Gates

Positive Thinking and Mental Health Supports Professionals working in the field of mental health and coaching incorporate the techniques of positive thinking and re-framing into their practices. Currently, the most popular of these is CBT, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. An example of how practitioners help the client, is to assist with a focus on what they want as opposed to a fixation on negative trigger events, which the client sees as the reason for their current state. There is no question that these positive thinking support methods, incorporated into standard health counseling, are effective. Professionals may use varying terminology and the most successful among them support the client towards moving in a more positive direction, attracting better and healthier outcomes by changing the way they think.

When should you reach out for professional help? Though elements of CBT have similarities to popular self-help positive thinking strategies, they are not the same. BPT strategies, without professional support, do not replace the need for mental health care from a licensed counsellor or other regulated health professional. These may include psychiatrists, psychologists, nurse practitioners, registered nurses, registered practical nurses, physicians, social workers and other health service providers. There are support organizations in your area and online, to help you access these services. Advice from your health service provider always takes precedent over any self-help tool or materials. Never confuse any personal development book