Ellen Nyland, author of Life is Great Even when it Sucks, has faced many challenges in life and overcome them with insight, humor and intelligence. She successfully negotiated living and balancing the personal and business relationship demands faced by living and working on the same farm with four generations in close proximity.
Ellen has been an unofficial life coach and source of counsel for a long time, but it was after her move from the Netherlands to Canada in 1998 that she became a certified professional co-active coach in 2008. Ellen saw and helped many people and families deal with the stresses put on personal and family relationships.
Ellen’s biggest passion in life is to empower others and help them discover their own magnificence. Ellen uses her own life story and the examples of others to show that the system she’s discovered through experience and study can help others move positively past their barriers to a more fully lived
Favorite Success Quote“When you don’t love and respect yourself then it is impossible to love and respect others”
“If you feel stuck, always do something”
Key Points1. Be the Lead Actor of Your Own Life
Often times it is easy to allow others to take the lead role in your life by allowing the standards and beliefs of family, friends and society to dictate your actions instead of following your own beliefs, dreams, and goals.
If you wish to live a life of success, you must become the lead actor in your life. You are the only constant and therefor you must take total responsibility for everything in your life. While you can still listen to the advice of others and take the consequences of your actions into account before acting, remember that you are the one who is ultimately responsible, not your parents, your friends, or your society.
2. Attitude is Everything
Life can suck. It can suck and we can’t control it. Children get sick, businesses fail, friends die, bad things happen. No one who has ever been born or will ever be born can face a life completely void of pain, but we can all face the pain a little bit better than we are now.
While you can’t change the inevitability of suffering, you can change your attitude towards it. If you face adversity by asking how it will make you stronger and better equip you to live out the purpose God has put on your life, then you will become infinitely more powerful than you ever imagined and the pain that you face will have purpose.
3. In Relationships you Must Grow in the Same Direction
As men, it is often easy to get sucked into relationships based purely upon physical attraction without much thought about the congruency of our partner’s mission and purpose. Whenever you are considering getting into a serious relationship, you need to examine your partner’s path and ensure that you are both growing in the same direction.
4. Build Your Toolbox
One of the most important things you can do for yourself and your future is to build your emotional ‘tollbox’ or your character. Focus on building yourself into the person that you need to become to achieve your goals. Build your integrity, your honor, your honesty, your kindness, your empathy, your compassion, your drive.
Build yourself up until success is inevitable. Because as Jim Rohn says, your level of success will rarely exceed your level of personal development.
