1. Coaches know the transformative power of great coaching. Usually it’s because they’ve experienced it first hand. It powers the passion. It’s why they aspired to become a coach in the first place!
2. All the passion, great intentions, and love for their clients isn’t enough to prevent potentially great coaches from getting bogged down or derailed in the myriad twists & turns of a coaching conversation and knowing that can evoke coach insecurity in spades!

Erase insecurity and the coach is set free to gallop forward at a fast clip guiding their client to guaranteed results in every coaching conversation. That’s the magic that results with a roadmap, defining the territory, and guiding the journey to it’s inevitable and accurate destination or outcome. In each and every coaching adventure there is a dire need for a coaching agreement. When a coach truly understands this they can roll up their sleeves and begin to learn how to use the most powerful tool in their coaching toolbox — the coaching agreement. A great coach must know how to easily and successfully create a coaching agreement every session. There is absolutely nothing that melts away any fears of making a mistake that a coach may have for their coaching session than knowing how to create a coaching agreement and knowing how to do that well!

As a first step on the journey to creating masterful results in every coaching engagement, with every client, every time you meet together I invite you to check out  “The Coaching Agreement”. It’s an informative read, and an interactive practice guide for all coaches interested in accessing more clients and making more income on their journey to becoming a more masterful coach. Go here and get yourself a copy now.

And yet, there probably is a solution. In fact, there may be a quite simple solution that’s fairly easy to implement. Two willing people have to participate. If that’s a challenge, and at least one of you is clear you want to make headway, be persuasive and persistent or involve a therapist as facilitator. I’m going to tell you how this process works so you can go ahead and turn things around with no further ado. This process optimally employs a therapist/facilitator guide, but do go ahead on your own if you are unable to employ a therapist to assist you.

Agree to the process and commit dedicated time in each of your schedules to seeing this process through. You must agree to the rules and agree to trust the process. You’ll need at least three 1-2 hr. blocks of uninterrupted time and privacy. Phones and other distractions should be switched off.

Begin each session by quietly and consciously acknowledging to yourself that the habits and patterns of your thinking and behavior have been established as a response to your unique circumstances. So, each of the communicators is recognized as inhabiting a unique little ‘bubble’ or ‘culture’, and doesn’t perceive or experience things exactly as you do. This is a good time to think of ‘the telephone game’.

A point of conflict, conversation, or issue is chosen as the ‘work’. The first person to have their turn (A), will use their session to articulate their point of view, the conversation or the issue as they see it, describing the situation as fully as possible, aiming to capture and express their own thoughts meaning, understanding and experience as fully as possible, starting from the beginning, moving to the middle and finishing at the end. The partner (B) listens intently, staying focused and undistracted, and attempting to temporarily inhabit the speaker’s bubble, with an intention to recapture the experience as if they had been A. Listener (B) is not allowed to interrupt speaker (A).

When A is finished, B’s job is to retell the story as if B is now A who has just told it. B is to recapture (act and tell) with as much of the same language and expression as possible, in an honest attempt to recreate in as much detail as possible. The point is to elicit a precise match with A till A feels B ‘got’ them, till A senses that as the speaker A was fully understood.

A can help B recapture A’s experience till it’s complete and A agrees with the retelling. Where there is discrepancy and mismatch, it is A’s job to clarify their meaning to B, till B tells it in a way that accurately captures what A was trying to describe. (“not exactly”, “that’s not quite what I said”, “I described how I was feeling like this…..” “I used these words…..” would be examples of clarifying).

There is no time frame which is ideal for this process. With 90 minutes set aside there is more flexibility when the time taken is much less, or lengthening it to 120 minutes if need be, or moving on to the next step. Longer than 2 hrs. at a stretch is not advised.

For the 2^nd part of the process the roles are reversed, and B becomes the designated person to capture in words their point of view, and experience of the same situation. Now A listens, and is not allowed to interrupt B,

as B tells their story with a beginning, a middle and an end. B will help clarify for A when it has become A’s time to recapture B’s view and experience and parrot it back exactly for B.

The third block of time in this process can serve for both A & B to appreciate the effect of inhabiting separate ‘bubbles’, and to consider potential areas and avenues for compromise. It can also be a time for expressing gratitude and appreciations.

Potential benefits:  empathy, reconnection, building trust and intimacy, deeper ‘knowing’ of the other, lifting the sense of being burdened, empowerment, supporting intuitive knowing and inner wisdom,  grounding, and potential for greater lightness of being.

Even though it may seem circumstances are putting impassable obstacles in your path, there is a lot you can do to significantly improve, and even turn around your situation. While therapy doesn’t–as some people assume–deal only with your past, there is great merit in understanding the subconscious negative messages that you tell yourself on an ongoing basis. The reason it is so helpful to become aware of how you’ve been programmed to think about money is to learn how to turn around and hopefully prevent self-sabotaging behavior. Self-sabotaging behavior often arises out of negative self-talk which often ‘runs’ perpetually in the background and often serves to thwart our more positive conscious intention of moving forward toward the successful accomplishment of our goals.

It’s neither naivete nor stupidity that has people dancing with illusion. It’s just that without the skillful means to navigate the inevitable obstacles that occur in our lives we have a tendency to reach the threshold of tolerance for frustration. What often happens next is to seek out substances which will numb us to the frustration that we are feeling.

It’s just not that easy to recognize that the solution is a simple one. Just like riding a bicycle takes practice to gain skill, navigating life’s obstacles comes by building up our navigation muscles. Two key phrases to remember on this journey to designing a life that really works are Who Am I? and What Do I Want? In other words the signposts to success can be found by scrutinizing our current self-image and by deeply considering the goals we would like to achieve.

Focus on behaving as if you already are the person you want to be. Get serious about setting aside time to focus on goal-setting. Write your goals out regularly. Prioritize them. Take some action towards your goals every day. Keep your eye on where you are going, not on where you have been. Persevere through the obstacles and find new and self-nurturing rewards for your successes.

this:

Self-critic, self censor, worthless, undeserving, undesirable, insecure, unconfident, self-doubt, disappointment, negative self-talk, unworthy, incapable, unsure, not good enough, self-condemnation, pitiful, apprehensive, anxious, deplorable, contemptible, pathetic, inadequate, small, pitiable, insufficient, unsatisfactory, lacking, deficient, ineffectual, defective, imperfect, hopeless, incapable, incompetent, unskilled, inept, unable, useless, weak, helpless, unqualified, vulnerable, feeble, nervous, worried, apprehensive, uneasy, fretful, fearful, hopeless, powerless………..

Absorbing criticism from external sources is nothing compared to time logged by the inner critic.

Here are some antonyms:

Magnificent, hopeful, powerful and prosperous!

Might it be time to turn down the volume on outer and inner self-deprecations, and instead turn toward the light?

Turn UP the volume on inner positive self-talk.

Shine a light on your Powerful, Prosperous, Hopeful and most Magnificent Self???

I was a little kid, being nicely reprimanded by my mother. But the message was clear and “why don’t you find something to complain about?” taught me an important thing or two early on. My young mind begrudgingly lingered there thinking–knowing the reflection was meant to be inside my own head.

The question implied that I was choosing. I, who in that moment was turning to the dark side, was choosing to do so. I was being told I was being a misery. Focusing on the negative. Not only being negative and complaining, but being willful and choiceful about it. Whatever it was that wasn’t pleasing me wasn’t actually a globally bad experience. It was simply that I was making the choice to feel badly. I was choosing negative. Choosing to be negative, choosing to complain, was only one of many options.

So now I know. Choosing to complain is a choice I make. And now you know too!

I’ve been thinking on Bliss’s bit about the prom note, and to not count on it. I found this quote earlier today on Bob Proctor’s ‘Insight of the Day’. It was timely. Someone near and dear had asked me yesterday for my thoughts on a particular prom note investment. What immediately came to mind was that a lot of ‘life savings’ seem recently lost at the cause of promissory note ‘investments’.

Although this little ‘insight’ from Bliss via Proctor, may be more pertinently about the utility of living in the present it seems simple, pertinent, and valuable advice when weighing in on prom note investing. If it’s money you can’t ‘afford’ to lose, better think twice! Put whatever you want into a potentially higher rate of return from this vehicle as long as you “don’t count on it”.

Apply the cautionary Bliss view. Being cautionary truly means don’t lend money that you cannot afford to lose.

Following up on that post, this one considers the self-critic. The self-critic arises perhaps, at the ‘tipping point’ of one’s ability to ‘manage’ the voice of an external critic. If the environment in which criticism arises is perceived to be safe and the input useful, it can potentially serve us if it adds to our desire to improve and helps generate action towards improvement. If the critical voice tips the scales in the other direction however, and self-doubt arises, the creative self can become stuck and stifled.

What way out? The way is forward, into movement and growth. Tune in to the inner voice of guidance and self-nurture. Don’t depend on an outcome, but trust yourself and do it anyway.

She was like a magical vehicle bringing her special interpretation of her moment-to-moment experiencing. It was lovely. Her a cappella rendition of something she was remembering or newly perceiving, recreated in perfect pitch, and accompanied by perfect, delightful, rhythmical movement.

And as she grew she became more and more conscious of how others perceived her, allowing the external critical voice to grow and co-creating a new internal critical voice. Rather than question the intent of the critic, sadly, she silenced spontaneous singing, dancing expressions of joy. Criticism contributed to killing the creative.

All this relates to the book that she gave me, which was Eat, Pray,Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. The worldwide acclaim and fame Gilbert has received is described here in a TED talk by Gilbert, which is also about historical shifts in how humans have conceptualized artistry and creative expression. Gilbert’s timely and significant message will assist some of the creatives among us to squelch the pressuring external voices of praise and criticism, turning responsibility for what comes through us to some external voice of the muse to speak as they best see fit–allowing creativity to live and thrive!