Day 47: Peggy McColl

November 16, 2009 at 12:01 am, Category: Inspiration

”I think it’s important to use our tools every day because we’re either growing or we’re dying.  We’re getting better or we’re getting worse, and it’s up to us to decide which direction and which side of that scale we want to be on.  So I believe that it’s daily discipline, because every single day it’s our opportunity to create more today than what we experienced yesterday.”

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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Peggy, for agreeing to be with us in this interview today, and before I begin with the questions, can you please introduce yourself.

Peggy McColl: Sure.  My name is Peggy McColl.  I’m the author of several books.  My website is peggymccoll.com, which is m-c-c-o-l-l.  I tell people that I wear two hats; one is that I’m in the self-help world and I do seminars and have books and programs and do mentoring, and the other hat that I wear is of a mentor, speaker, author in the online marketing world.  So I help entrepreneurs build their business, expand their business, create revenue, build their brand using online internet techniques.

Toni: Okay, thank you for that.  That leads very nicely into the first question, which is — in the work that you do or even from a personal perspective — who do you believe that you inspire, and then how do you go about that?

Peggy: Well, I think it’s an important question that all entrepreneurs and business owners should ask themselves on a regular basis, actually.  It might be a question you want to put on a card and put it in front of you so that you’re focused on that, because it really leads to and lends itself well to reminding us of what our purpose is.

So, I find that who I’m inspiring are usually more women are my audience, so it’s heavily weighted in the women category, and of course men as well.  I inspire authors because most authors that have written a book would like it to be a bestseller, so I teach authors how to make their books a bestseller.  I also work with a lot of entrepreneurs, people that are either an entrepreneur now and want to grow their business or get into their business full time, or even folks that want to look for alternative ways of making money and drawing abundance into their life.  And so I do that through my books, through my teleseminars, through speaking engagements, and through my mentoring services; and all of my businesses come to me from word-of-mouth or through internet marketing.  So that’s who I inspire and how I inspire them.

Toni: When you bring it from a personal perspective, the same way that you go about looking at who you inspire and how, does that translate into your personal life as well?

Peggy: Yeah, I think it always does, because when you go to work the whole you goes with you so it’s the mom, it’s the wife, it’s the sister, it’s all parts of you, the friend.  And I have found that … and it’s been kind of surprising, you know, when I’ll hear things from my son or my husband or friends who tell me how I inspire them and it’s pleasantly surprising, and so absolutely it spills over into your personal life.

Toni: When you talk about how you inspire leads me to … does that translate into how you might help others explore their potential?

Peggy: Yes.  I’ve been known to see more in others than they see in themselves, and I think it’s a strength that I have.  And that’s why the mentoring works really well, because I’ll start working with a client in a mentoring capacity — somebody who wants to make some money online or perhaps they’re dealing with some self-limiting beliefs — and I will see more in them than they see in themselves.  And as a result of that, it helps them to create this new level of awareness and gets them excited about potential opportunities.

Quite often you’ll hear people say that someone who has been successful had someone else who really believed in them, who was really behind them, who was like a cheerleader or support person.  That’s not always the case, but I’ll tell you when you have somebody sort of behind you, beside you, or with you that is supporting you and cheering you on and encouraging you and helping you see the potential that’s not only out there in the world but you have within you, it really amplifies the whole creation process.  It’s like the fuel, right?  It’s like the fuel that really gets you going and keeps you going.

Toni: It certainly does light a spark, doesn’t it?

Peggy: It does.

Toni: How do you go about that exploration process in your teaching and your speaking?  What do you do?  What techniques do you use to help them explore their potential, which I would imagine also is very inspiring to them?

Peggy: It’s done through a sequence of questions.  When people come to me and they say “Okay, I want to know how your mentoring works or whatever; like do you have a 12-week program where you’ve clearly defined we will be doing this the first week, and you’ve outlined the next weeks activities, etc.?” I don’t.  And the reason I don’t is because everybody is different.  Everyone is unique.

We come to the table with different skill sets already developed.  We come to the table with different talents, and I think it’s important to, first of all, discover you know what your own unique sets of talents are and what your own desires are, because we all have our own desires.  We all have our goals.  Now, sometimes they’re similar and sometimes they’re not, so how I go about it is just by asking questions.

So it starts with a series of questions … asking my clients what it is that they are really passionate about, what are they excited about, what it is that they would love to do, what would they like to be remembered for if they could do anything?  And if they were doing that; what would that feel like?

See, what happens is when you ask people some of these questions, they immediately start to think of the how.  “Well, how am I going to do that?”  And they just cancel out that potential opportunity.  I say don’t worry about the how, just tell me what you’d like, as if the universe was this big machine that we can go to and say “Okay, here’s what I would like”, and it’s going to deliver on all those things.  And so that’s how I begin.  I explore this through a sequence or a series of questions.

Toni: So it’s not so much … I really like the way that you clarified that, which was not to worry so much about the how, but first let’s figure out what it is and then how will it make you feel, and that drives inspiration and potential in others.  I think that’s fantastic.  When you seek inspiration, Peggy, what do you need to be inspired?  What do you seek?  What tools do you reach for just for inspiration?

Peggy: Well, when I’m looking for inspiration, I connect myself back to purpose, which is the reason why I’m doing what I’m doing, and that gets me inspired.  That’s my big trigger and my amplifier.  And so I created a purpose statement a number of years ago that is right on the front page of my website that says “To make a positive contribution to the lives of millions of others.”  And so it’s there, it’s on my website, it’s something I can rhyme off at any time.

It was something that I used to have taped on my mirror.  I don’t anymore because it’s completely embedded in my entire being, and so I need to remind myself … and I think sometimes being inspired or getting inspired is just an act of remembering.  Remembering why you’re doing what you’re doing, and remembering that you can create your own purpose in remembering that you’re always at choice.  Which we are; we’re always at choice.  And we don’t have to do anything if we don’t want to, and that’s fine as well.

And so for me to be inspired is to remember that I’m a human being that is perfect just the way I am.  Now, some people call that flawed, some people call it imperfection.  You can call it whatever you want, but I think what happens with a number of folks — and I used to do this myself — is that we set up standards so high that they are impossible to reach.  And because of that, we live in this state called dissatisfaction.  And dissatisfaction can be very dark and bleak and lonely and destructive, although it can also create an inspiration as well.

I remember hearing the statement that “dissatisfaction stimulates growth.”  And I’ve been in those positions of being dissatisfied, and I may even get there again.  And that’s fine, because then I’ll remember, “Okay, what it is it that I’m doing?  What is my purpose?  What is it that I want to do?”  So I believe that what I do or what I need to do to be inspired is to remind myself.  To me the answer is one word; it’s to remember.  Simply to remember.

Toni: It’s interesting … we’ve just completed the first 31 days of the Get Inspired! Project for this full year of a project_- and people are coming randomly; there’s no selection process here — and that has been the common theme, which is the inspiration comes from and then helps others to find their purpose.  It’s interesting; how do people get to that point?  That moment when you go, “You know what, I need to know what my purpose is and then remember it.”  How do you get there?

Peggy: Well, you have to trust; and it’s this emotion called faith which is a very powerful emotion.  You have to be in states that are positively connected to the feeling of what it will feel like when you are experiencing that which you desire.  And you’ve heard a lot of different speakers talk on this.  Abraham Hicks, they talk about being in frequency or alignment.  And I wrote a book called Your Destiny Switch which talks about the nature and the power of our emotions, and they’re like on a dimmer switch that goes up and down.  And there’s a definite correlation between what you’re expressing and what’s showing up in your life.

And so we need to trust a lot of times.  The challenge of “how” all the time — if we’re constantly seeking that how-how-how-how, and we’re holding on tight — we have to sometimes detach from specific outcomes happening in a particular way and trust that they will happen, connect to what it feels like when they happen, and get on with feeling what that emotion feels like.  So it’s kind of like a backward formula in a way, but it’s what creates the magic.  It really is a creative, magical formula to decide what you want, decide what that’s going to feel like when you’re having it or experiencing it, and then get on with the feelings and feel it every single day.

And that’s why being a state of gratitude is so important.  Every day I write in my gratitude journal — sometimes throughout the day — and feel that state of gratitude of just like “All right!”,  “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” for whatever it is that I desire; and that really, really inspires me as well.

Toni: Now when you take this inspiration, that sense of purpose and remembering it — and thank you so much for spending the time to talk about how to get to your purpose and remember that with the trust and the faith – how does that then drive you to continuously explore your own potential?  Is there a correlation in that?

Peggy: How does it continually drive it?  Well, you have to remind yourself of it, I believe, every single day.  So I have a lot of tools that I use, and it’s kind of like a carpenter.  A carpenter is going to build things, and every day they are out to build something, and so they have a specific set of tools that they use.  And of course they’re going to call upon certain tools depending on what it is that they want to build.

And so what you’ll find in all of my books are tools, that’s something that’s really, really important that I put in my books, even in my newest book which is called Viral Explosions which is shipping March, 2010.  There will be tools to help people understand how do you create a viral explosion?  Your Destiny Switch has tools for how do you switch your emotions when you’re on the lower end of the scale?

So for me, when I wake up in the morning, I don’t put my feet on the ground until I’m in a state of gratitude, until I’m getting excited and feeling excited about life in general and feeling the excitement and elation of the goals that I have set before me and what it feels like to have already achieved them.  And then in my washroom, like my ensuite washroom, I have affirmations, I have empowering questions I ask myself, I have my vision board which I’m looking at, I have a power life script which I have on audio.  So as I’m getting ready, I’m doing all these things.  I’m using my tools.

Why am I using my tools?  To remind me of what I’m inspired about.  To remind me of what my purpose is in life.  And those are just the ones I do in the morning.  And then throughout the day, I have other ones.  I have a goal card that I have laminated, and I put it in my pocket and I pull it out and I read my goal card.  I’ll get in my car and I’ll drive, let’s say, to the bank as I did this morning, and I’ll plug in my CD or my MP3 player — because now my car has that neat little feature — and I’ll listen to my life script.  And my life script is something I wrote to me, about me, in the present tense as if I’m already living the life that I desire.   And that only causes me to feel inspired.  It causes me to have a big smile on my face, because not every day you wake up and you’re feeling like “Woo-hoo, let’s take on the world!”   There’s some days you wake up and you’re not feeling inspired.

So I believe we need to create these tools and have them ready, just like a carpenter has their tools ready when it’s important to build.  But I use mine every day, and I think it’s important to use our tools every day because we’re either growing or we’re dying.  We’re getting better or we’re getting worse, and it’s up to us to decide which direction and which side of that scale we want to be on.  So I believe that it’s daily discipline, because every single day it’s our opportunity to create more today than what we experienced yesterday.

Toni: And that is your exploration of your own potential which then drives the inspiration for you.  And what I took away from that is all of the tools that you use to help explore your own potential are really to help you remember what your purpose is, which keeps you inspired.  And then you spoke about how that also helps you work with others to explore their own potential and to deal with their self-belief and to feel that and to know what their purpose is.  And so it seems to be a great transfer of energy and belief and faith and trust of your own purpose that goes into your work with others.  That’s what I heard in this interview.

Peggy: Wow, you’re good!

Toni: No, it’s not me; you said it, not me!

Peggy: Well, you did an amazing summary, and I think what it really reminds me of are two things, as you’re saying, two important points.  One is that we are unique.  And so I believe … I just released a book called The Won Thing, and The Won Thing was this pursuit that I was on that somebody had an answer to one thing that was going to make me feel complete and successful and fulfilled.  And I realized, after 20 years of being in this pursuit, that there is no one thing; there is no one thing that is for everybody, and we’re all unique.

So for me, working on goals when I was in my 20s was the one thing that I needed to work on.  Then, when I shifted to gratitude, that was the one thing that I needed to work on.  Then, when I switched to being of service to others, that was the one thing.  And I think it changes.  It changes because it’s like a personal formula.  And I’ve decided what I want to create in my life, but it’s totally different from what my sister wants to create in her life, as an example.  And that’s all perfect, it’s all fine.  And I believe we need to come from the state of being this, which is that connection to what it feels like to be living that life; and you will get the results that you want when you remember all those things.

Toni: And that’s why this project is so important to others and the feedback that we’ve gotten is just what you had given today with your time.  You have given your approaches to inspiration but also your needs and how they do correlate.  And so what sparks you and drives you is how you are using those tools and that sense of inspiration to make a difference in other people’s lives.  And for you to share that with us for this project in this 15 minutes of time is a gift you’ve given us, and we thank you for that.

Peggy: My pleasure, my absolute pleasure.  Thank you.

Toni: Thank you, take care.

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For more information about Peggy McColl:  www.peggymccoll.com

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