The most successful entrepreneurs have one thing in common – they have no ceiling on what they believe they can achieve.  At Venture Coaching, we encourage more than just positive thinking – we focus on advanced thinking that will permanently change the way you live your life and run your business.

Although we specialise in business coaching, we believe advanced thinking isn’t just for business owners, so this year we are looking for a group of say 10 to 20 people to invite on a coaching coaching retreat.

We have standing by one of the most highly regarded names in the personal development world, Mrs Diana Nightingale, who will fly in from Arizona to lead our retreat which can be held in places such as Lemore Manor.

Diana is an author, life coach and internationally renowned speaker and is the widow of legendary pioneer of personal development, Earl Nightingale.

The aim of the retreat will be to focus on developing your mind for success, be that in business or any other endeavour that will take you beyond what you have achieved in your life so far.

The objective of our retreats is to elevate your thinking.  You will identify and overcome the mental barriers that hinder your progress and develop a mind-set that will set you up for continued success in the weeks, months and years ahead.

All to often, we are held back by the subtle negative influences of people around us. If you are in a relationship, business or personal, we encourage you to bring your partner along too!  They cannot fail to benefit from what we will cover in our presentations and you will have excitement of supporting each other in your respective endeavours.

To find out more, please send a request through our contact page or call us on 01747 821352

While books and DVD development programmes are all fantastic sources of information you can only concentrate on their contents for as long as your surroundings allow you to.

I first had the idea to run coaching retreats while attending a training course in 2008.  The workshops were fast-paced and full of information and would have been great on their own but the highlight of the experience, for me, was having time away from my everyday commitments to think about what I was learning and to meet new people who were sharing their thoughts and ideas.

It’s all too easy to have your thoughts pulled in a hundred different directions every day.  If you have some serious thinking to do, you really can’t beat shutting yourself away from the rest of the world and focussing completely on what you want to do, whether that is starting a business, changing career, planning your retirement or getting the right work/home-life balance.

Our goal is that you will leave the retreat excited, motivated and energised –  a big kick-start to making the changes you desire!

I believe that the more inspiring the venue, the better your thought processes will be.  That is why Kevin and I are very picky about where we hold our retreats.  We have seen some beautiful venues, but only those who are owned or managed by people who genuinely care about the quality of our guests’ experience have been chosen for our retreats.

Please feel free to contact us and ask questions if you would like to take part.

Diana Nightingale is one of the most highly recognized personalities in the personal development industry.  An author, speaker, life‐coach, seminar leader and radio host, she is also most often thought of as the widow of personal development pioneer and legend Earl Nightingale, who, with the writing and recording of his world‐famous recording of “The Strangest Secret” in 1956, blazed the trail for the authors and speakers of today’s personal development industry.

Diana Nightingale, does not stand in the shadow of her legendary husband, but instead, shines brightly on her own. Prior to meeting and marrying Earl Nightingale, Diana had been a top‐producing real estate Broker and had also worked with inner-city teens, and the Mental Health Association. She recognized the important role that knowledge plays in the making of right choices in one’s life.

Diana wanted to be sure to keep the valuable Nightingale messages pertinent and available to the present and future generations and so in 1987 she and Earl formed a new company – “Keys Publishing”, whose mission statement is – “Unlocking doors through education.” Together they began re‐creating his and her works for the present and future generations. In 1989, Earl passed away, but Diana has continued the work they began, and has expanded Earl’s and her messages and is reaching people from all walks of life all around the world.

Not only was The Nightingale Retreat an experience that we will treasure for the rest of our life, excitingly Diana has asked if she can work with Venture Coaching and put on a “Nightingale adVenture retreat” here in the UK…

See our events page for exciting news of dates and venues…

A lesser known fact is that you also have your ancestors to thank for your tendency to keep putting things off.  Procrastination is most commonly associated with impulsiveness, a trait that would have aided survival in primitive days.  Early men would be quite inactive for most of the time, preserving their energy for hunting.  Short-term planning ability with quick decision making was the main requisite for survival.  There would have been little point in them wasting mental energy creating long term plans.  Success was all about reacting quickly to whatever life threw at them that day.  If they sat under trees thinking about their life’s direction for the next five years they would most likely have been eaten by a bear…

Man’s progress has been a lop-sided process; while we have raced ahead and created a world where a great majority of us are safe, well nourished and actively engaged deciding what we want from life, we still have the ball and chain of our most primitive instincts encouraging us to eat cake, preserve energy and not bother ourselves with long term consequences.  To survive and thrive in today’s world we must be disciplined and focussed.

Overindulging in the wrong foods starts with an instinct and ends with a habit.  The same is true of procrastination.  The habit persists because there are all sorts of bonuses linked to putting things off; you get to spend hours on You Tube or Facebook.  You get the adrenaline rush of a deadline approaching and the thrill of squeezing five weeks work into five hours. You get to “not fail” which is almost as good as succeeding but with the added benefit of not making a fool of yourself if you get it wrong.  You get to “not choose” which is the ultimate non-action as the choice you make may require further actions which could clog up your action-taking pipeline in a most uncomfortable way!

So what can you do if procrastination is getting the better of you?  The great Earl Nightingale had some very wise words on the subject: CLICK HERE

A good deal of frustration and unhappiness could be avoided if people would just do what they know they should do.

The great newspaper editor Arthur Brisbane once wrote,  “Don’t exaggerate your own importance, your own size, or your own miseries.  You are an ant in a human anthill. Be a working ant — not a ridiculous insect pitying yourself.” Strong language, maybe, but there’s a lot of sense in it.

A person carrying a heavy weight is all right as long as he keeps moving.  The minute he stops, puts the weight on the ground, and sits down to rest, the weight seems to become heavier; the distance to be travelled, greater; and the work, just that much more unpleasant.

Sometimes it must seem to everyone that things have piled up so high that there’s just no way of digging out.  But there is.  Pick the thing that’s most important to do, and simply begin doing it. Just by digging in, you’ll feel better, and you’ll find that it’s not nearly as bad as you thought it would be.  Keep at it, and before long, that pile of things to do that seemed so overwhelming is behind you — finished.

What overwhelms us is not the work itself. It’s thinking how hard it’s going to be.  It’s seeing it get larger every day.  It’s putting it off and hoping that somehow, through some miracle, it will disappear.

The Chinese have a saying that a journey of a thousand miles begins with but a single step. And that step accomplishes two things.  First, it automatically shortens the distance we still have to travel, and, second, and just as important, it makes us feel better, more hopeful — it strengthens our faith.  If a person will just keep putting one foot in front of the other, he will be taken into new and exciting places, see new and interesting things, and think thoughts that never would have come to him if he’d remained at the starting point.  Then the journey is finished.  He wonders how or why he could ever have sat so long and worried and stewed about the time and trouble it would involve to do what he knew he should do.

If you’ll think back, you’ll remember that you’ve always been happiest, most contented, after having finished a difficult project or faced up to a responsibility you were worried about.  It’s never as bad as you think it’s going to be, and the joy that will come with its accomplishment makes it more than worthwhile.

Work never killed anyone.  It’s worry that does the damage and the worry would disappear if we’d just settle down and do the work.”

We have already created a number of exclusive events as shown on our retreats page and after spending some time looking around this beautiful property we would love to have the opportunity to take a group of people here. We think it is a perfect venue for a corporate retreat.  We can arrange coaching workshops or assist you with a strategic planning meeting and allow those that attend proper thinking time to explore all the possibilities for creating an action plan to move forward.

Nestling in 9 acres of landscaped grounds and beautiful walled gardens, Woodhall has recently been lovingly restored with exceptional attention to detail.  The house retains all the atmosphere and charm of a 16th century building, whilst the 12 en-suite bedrooms have all been individually decorated to a truly exceptional standard with, every modern convenience.

The venue is booked many months in advance at weekends for the wedding market, but we can secure a retreat during the week at Woodhall Manor at relatively short notice for your company or organisation.

Why not contact us and give us the opportunity to put our ideas forward for providing the perfect launch pad to take you and your business to the next level.  Our Nightingale adVenture is also available until 18 May 2012 Click here for details

It is only about 40 minutes from where we live and, until 2011, we had no idea who owned it or what it was used for. When searching for perfect venues to hold Venture Coaching retreats, we came across the property on the Amazing Retreats web site.

We made our enquiries and went to visit and we were impressed!  The place is beautiful; the great big stone walls seem to hug you as you step into the building.  It only has nine rooms, perfect for a small corporate team event.  Many of the rooms have en-suite bathrooms created within the turrets of the castle.

We took a group of professionals to spend an exclusive evening at the castle and we created a workshop around some specific questions they had about the direction and future growth plans of their business.  The event was a real success, everyone was able to relax and enjoy the sumptuous ground floor lounge and dining areas where we held the workshop.  We were then served a delicious meal with a little wine and the conversation and discussions within the group opened up.

The following morning after a fantastic breakfast we held a conclusion meeting which created an action plan ready for the group to act upon back at their desks.  We have since worked with the group and they are making tremendous progress and excited about the year ahead.

Why not contact us and gives us the opportunity to put our ideas forward to providing the perfect launch pad to take you and your business to the next level.  Our Nightingale adVenture is also available until 18 May 2012 Click here for details

The computer is a powerful machine that is programmed and controlled by human beings; it is a high speed moron, and it can only carry out mechanical instructions.

The human brain, however, can think…

First, how do we think?

Power of Absorption

We gather information which we take in with our 5 senses:

Looking
Listening
Touching
Smelling
Tasting

Power of Retention

We have an ability to retain knowledge and many of us fall very short on the true capacity of knowledge we can retain and recall when we need it.

Power of Judgement

We think logically.  The more information we absorb and retain the better we are able to judge intelligently.

Power of Imagination

We can think creatively

Small children have pure imagination, but as we grow older we forget and seldom use this, we play safe and find it difficult to continue imagining things.  New ideas are often put down by others; people will play safe and say “We always do it this way” or “You can’t do that!”  These people are idea killers, they stifle creativity, but, we sometimes use these negative remarks on others, but worse still we use them on ourselves.

How do we improve our thinking?

The key to better thinking is to use these four switches in your mind:

Absorption – Retention – Judgement – Imagination

Many of us stop using the final one, Imagination; dreaming and goal setting.

Grab a note pad, sit comfortably and write down all your thoughts, all your ideas, all your dreams, ambitions and wants… describe in as much detail as you can.  Dare to do things differently.

Keep the note pad to hand:

Ideas can come from anyone or anywhere – they can be tiny little seeds and easily forgotten.

Ideas demand care and attention – they are easily dismissed or rejected without proper thought.

Ideas need encouragement – by writing them down, you can work on finding solutions to test and explore if it is the right idea.

The full spoken word recording of Earl Nightingale’s Creative Life Library is a rich source of inspiration and is available to download at www.earlnightingale.com

Most of the time our light bulb moments come when we least expect them; maybe you have been wrestling with a problem for days or weeks, then suddenly when you take a shower, or mow the grass or just sitting on a park bench… wham! Some crazy idea lands in your mind that solves that issue you had.

This is the same for all of us, but what if we could accelerate these thoughts and find the answers much quicker?

This is what the service of coaching does.  By providing structure and guidance and more importantly time to think a coach can help you fine tune your thoughts, provide feedback and direction towards the right kind of knowledge that will help you get the answers you need.

Many years ago he used to work as a painter and decorator for a commercial firm, he attended site with a team of co-workers all working on the same project.  If you have ever done any decorating, the key to a good finish is in the preparation – sanding, cleaning, sanding, and more cleaning before you ever apply any paint.

He and his fellow workers would use sheets and sheets of sand paper, once finished it would be thrown on the floor to be swept up with the rest of the dust and rubbish…

His boss arrived on site, and complained at the amount of wastage of part used sand paper sheets, picking up half used sheets from the floor and pointing out how much this was costing the firm.

To make his point the he gathered his work force together and collected several dozen sheets of half used sand paper in his hand and proceeded to explain the cost of each sheet multiplied by the number of workers, multiplied by the number of working days per year.  To his annoyance everyone shrugged their shoulders and just couldn’t see what the point and fuss was really all about.

So he took a moment, pulled out £60 in notes from his pocket, screwed them into a ball and promptly lit them with a match and set fire to them!!

A point my client still remembers some 30 years later…