| Your Destiny Switch - An Interview with Peggy McColl |
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| Lenny Balston | |
| Wednesday, 19 March 2008 | |
  Peggy McColl is an internationally recognised expert in the area of destiny achievement and has for the past 25 years been inspiring individuals, experts, professional athletes, and organisations to reach their potential. Having a technology background and a passion for goal-achievement has proven to be a huge asset for this best-selling author and speaker who is also the president and founder of Dynamic Destinies Inc, an organisation ‘committed to delivering sound principles for creating lasting and positive change’.Peggy’s latest book Your Destiny Switch is a New York Times Best Seller, and according to Neale Donald Walsch “This may be the most important book you have ever read”. Lenny Balston from Harmonious Living spoke to Peggy during her recent tour of South Africa. Questions
Peggy McColl: The desire began in my 20s, I wasn’t ready to do it yet but the desire was there. I was in so much emotional pain and I managed to get myself out it, and I knew there were other people who were experiencing emotional pain, and I wanted to help them. I had been studying so many different teachers and I found a lot of them to be brilliant, but complicated, and I just realised that all we need is a simple understanding or a simple explanation that can give us the knowledge so that we can apply it to our lives. So I tend to take an idea and throw it into a giant funnel and distil it, and let it come out of the bottom in the most simplistic fashion that it can. And that’s really what I did with Your Destiny Switch, is that I came up with a concept, an idea and a strategy, its multiple strategies, and a system. Lenny: For those who haven’t read Your Destiny Switch, what would you say the book is about? Peggy McColl: It’s helping people understand the power of their emotions and taking control back into their own lives and not giving it away to someone else or something else, like a country. Because the country’s having economic setbacks you feel it means that you can’t do anything about it. So you have to realise that you’ve got the power within you to make the change, in a way that’s explained with the skill of human emotions. Our emotions are like a dimmer switch, they go up and down. And it offers simple strategies to switch from low level energy emotions to high level energy emotions, so that people can create disciplines, that they’re actually using everyday, to make a positive change. Lenny: Did you find that through your workshops here in South Africa that South Africans are more negative than elsewhere in the world? Peggy McColl: No not all. I absolutely found the South Africans to be warm, inviting and welcoming, and open and hungry. One of the things I noticed, when I was speaking, it just amazed me the attention that was given. I found people to be really hungry, and there’s no greater thrill for me than to go and feed the hungry. I was totally wired, on an energy high. Like last night I was walking down to do the four-hour seminar and I was thinking in my head “I have no idea how I’m going to do this…” I literally felt like I was going to fall over, because I didn’t sleep at all the night before. But by the end of it some guys were like, “hey let’s go for some sushi” and I’m like “ja!”. So I’ve absolutely loved every second here. Lenny: Despite the lack of sleep? Peggy McColl: Yeah. There’s no bad feeling attached to that, yeah there’s tired feelings [laughs], and I want to come back. I have another book coming out in about four months and I think it’s a really important book for South Africans. It’s called the “Twenty One Distinctions of Wealth” and the subtitle is “Attract the Abundance You Deserve”. Its not on financial strategies, it’s not like a Suzy Orman type of book, it’s more on the spiritual side of money, wealth and riches, and abundance and deservedness.  Lenny: There are a lot of life coaching books out there, you’ve read a lot of life coaching books, why is this one different?Peggy McColl: [Laughs] I was laughing because I get that question asked a lot and I think it’s an important question. When I was writing this book, and when Hay House had chosen to publish it, I had said to them I want to call it “The World Doesn’t Need Another Self-Help Book”. Lenny: Great title [laughs] Peggy McColl: It is a great title because there’s a book born every minute. I remember once hearing a speaker say “There’s a baby born every minute in the world, and someone needs to find that women and stop her!” [laughs all round] And books are born every minute, but I really believe that Your Destiny Switch is unique, because of the whole concept of the scale of human emotions, our emotions being on dimmer, so it gives us that understanding. Yesterday I was at the book store in Durban and this woman came up to me, and she said “you know what I absolutely love about Your Destiny Switch is just how simple it is. You explained in such a way that I really got it!” because she’d read lots of other books she’d go “Ok, but I’m still hungry, I want to know how, how do I take this great wisdom and apply it into my life?” And she said “It’s already been beneficial to me”, so that was nice to hear. Lenny: When you do your workshop I’m sure you get a lot of people coming to you saying “How do I know what my destiny is? How do I find it?” Peggy McColl: I think that one of the best ways to really determine our destiny is to get in touch with what feels good. When I was working in the corporate world, it was fulfilling for me in some ways, but I knew it wasn’t my passion because it was tiring. You know there’s a little bit of dread when you have to go to work, and now I associate it with going to prison. When I moved into my own business and I started to do the work that I deeply love to do, I worked my tail off, and probably worked harder than I had in my entire life, but it doesn’t feel like work. And I think that’s when I think we know when we’re living our destiny when something starts to feel good. It’s not just career either, destiny could be being a Mom who stays at home and takes care of her children and that’s her destiny, it could be a single woman who’s just enjoying time travelling the world. It’s not something that has to be world changing or earth shattering, it can be anything, just what’s right for you. Lenny: So what is it ultimately that prevents most people from following their destiny and reaching their goals? Peggy McColl: I think because we are habitual beings and that we come into the world and we’ve been raised that we do things a certain way, so we’re almost robotic, we just start doing all the things that we assume that we should be doing without really even getting in touch with the idea that there’s many other ways. So it’s about choosing to do things a little bit differently, to say “ok that hasn’t been done, but that’s ok, I can do it”. Lenny: You mention your son quite a lot in your book, how did being a single mother assist you or hamper you in achieving your goals? Peggy McColl: Oh that’s a great question, it didn’t hamper me at all, he’s the greatest gift that I have. What’s been really helpful is the Internet because I can do it from home in my blue jeans or pyjamas if I want and I can spread my message to the world. Right now I’m obviously away from home, my ex-husband and I have an arrangement where Michelle (my son) is with each of us 50 percent of the time. He’s 15 now and will be 16 this year, and I have never taken him on any business travel, that would sacrifice my time with my son, he’s number one… my husband’s number two [laughs all round], and he knows it. Lenny: What do you do to relax and unwind? Peggy McColl: Not much! [laughs] I love movies, love movies, absolutely love movies! Lenny: Do you have a favourite actor? Peggy McColl: George Clooney maybe? He’s a hunk! (laughs) My husband’s more attractive than George Clooney, but George Clooney’s easy on the eyes as they say. Morgan Freeman is one of my favourite actors, he’s magnificent and Jack Nicholson is an absolutely fabulous actor as well, I love him. I love Jodie Foster. I would watch movies every single night but my husband loves hockey, Canada - Hockey, so we have to watch hockey. When I was here the other day, one of the Hay House girls gave me a copy of the Louise Hay movie, and I watched that twice, that to me was relaxing. I can play golf, but honestly I haven’t played a lot in the past few years, I work a lot, when my son goes to bed I work, my husband keeps himself busy, he was a pilot but he’s just retired so he’s travelled a lot. I’ve got a bike, I go cycling, I roller blade, I play golf, but not that much to be honest, I bought a boat but I don’t get out on my boat very often. Lenny: So your work is your relaxation in some kind of bizarre way. Peggy McColl: Yep, absolutely. Lenny: So what do you still want to achieve? Peggy McColl: I’m writing more books. I’m working on my next one, coming out in a couple of months, called the The Won Thing (yes, W O N). It’s written in a fiction style about this girl who’s searching for the won thing. I won’t tell you what it is, you’ll find out when you get the book and you read it, it’s in the end. It’s my story sort of, but Sophia is the character in the book. So what’s next for me is more serving the world in every possible way that I can, to make a positive and beneficial contribution to the lives of others. Lenny: Do you think you’ll ever tire of it? Peggy McColl: [Laughs] Yeah! Getting there… [laughs]. It’s a commitment, and just as I’ve been down here and thinking of going to a book store signing and selling a dozen books, and what does that mean ultimately? Some people think that it’s a luxurious life, and it’s not so luxurious [laughs]. It’s a tonne of work, and I’m absolutely thrilled when one book sells, not because I’ll make a $1.25 (laughs), but just that it’s out there and that it’s perhaps making a difference in one person’s life. I think I’ll get to a point where I’ll want to slow down. I’m 49 years of age, I’ll be 50 this year, so maybe in five years I’ll think about slowing down a little bit, but not anytime soon! |
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