I have been in the personal development business for more than fifteen years now and, to be honest, a get more than a little fed up when I come across people, who are as mad as hatters, suddenly proclaiming themselves to be a life coach because they did a weekend course or get some internet accreditation. Being a life coach is a deadly serious business. A coach is well placed to play with people’s minds – and there are plenty of them who do just that with awful consequences. Their clients ‘follow their gut’ – a saying I have come across too many times – or people ‘go with the flow’ – more life-coach-speak. But I sometimes find myself trying to help someone pick up the pieces of their lives having taken such so-called professional advice.

I host a two-day personal development seminar – I’ve been at it for over fifteen years – and I explain to participants that they’ve been provided with all the tools that are required to do whatever they want to do with their lives, whether that’s make lots of money, find their ‘one true love’ (whatever that means!) or simply experience happiness. However, the problem with most people is that they want someone to hold their hands for them. As a child, your parents led you by the hand – your teachers did the same, perhaps not literally. Now that you’re an adult, you need to grow up. It’s time to be responsible for your life – you’re the only one who can. It’s time to stop leaning on the supports provided by anyone else and start getting things done for yourself – I think that’s what self help and self improvement mean.

You need to realize that the only person who can take control of your mind is you. And, more importantly, you need to understand that, if you don’t get inside that head of yours and take charge, nothing in your life will change. Over seven decades of research in the discipline of psychology tells us that the normal mind controls the normal person and that this normal mind is tortured by the ghosts of our formative years. Neuro-psychological research also confirms that, when we assume control of our minds, we can enter what successful people describe as the ‘peak performance zone’ and change our lives. But nobody else can do that for you.

You’ve got to tame your wild mind. It’s wild because, right now, it’s a law unto itself. It’s consumed by your formative years and worried about your future – and you’re stuck, helpless, in the middle. You must take over the levers of power – tell your mind who’s in charge. Train your mind to focus on the here and now – the place and time that your mind won’t focus on at all – the time and place that life is lived, where risks are taken, where opportunity knocks.

So, having read these few words, take ten minutes to, quite literally, smell the roses. Sit down and shut your eyes, experience the sounds of the real world, the aromas of now, the rhythm of your own breathing – the reality of the moment. For, if you don’t come to your senses, your life will never change.