One of the downsides to living in the tropical paradise of Southwest Florida I’m learning is the constant alert and perpetual waiting for the next big hurricane. I thought I was just about ready to make it through my inaugural hurricane season without trauma. I recently relocated to the Ft. Myers area from Kansas City area. Early this week we were advised that Wilma, the largest hurricane ever to be recorded was projected to be heading our way.    more »

The key to achieving your coachable goals with your life coach is that you unravel the mystery of you. You will use your life coach as your personal private mirror to dig down within you to discover your true passions, priorities, beliefs and values, talents and self-imposed obstacles. These make up your inner ingredients that impact virtually all aspects of your life. They are within you. Yet, they are difficult to see, recognize, and understand without the help of another person. Discovering these many important inner aspects about you will depend on how openly you divulge them to your life coach. If you have any reservations about talking with a particular life coach, then you will want to seriously consider selecting another life coach, with whom you have no hesitation.    more »

I’ve been reading an interesting book this week, The Power of Full Engagement, by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, which proposes a huge paradigm shift for those of us seeking life balance from better productivity, high performance, and improved time management. The authors suggest that energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of high performance and personal renewal. It’s not the number of hours in our day, but the quantity and quality of energy available to us. Ideally, we should be eager to get to work and happy to return home, with clear boundaries between the two. We are asked to consider life, optimally, as a series of sprints, not a marathon.    more »

We are all subjected to the ‘shoulds’ as we grow up. We are told by our parents, by our teachers, by our friends, by massive advertising, by our bosses, and by the laws we live under, what we should and should not do. The many ‘shoulds’ people try to impose on others are most often very contradictory. Some people say you should do this, others say you should do the opposite. Why people tell you what you should do?    more »

We often talk of “self-imposed obstacles” to potential clients as those things that tend to get in the way of us accomplishing our goals. Author, Rick Carson, named self-imposed obstacles “Gremlins” in his classic self-help book, Taming Your Gremlin. The gremlin is a metaphor for our negative thoughts. Many times the gremlins we know, rather than the gremlins we don’t know, are the ones that stand in the way of our success. ** You can’t do… ** You should be…. ** You need to…. ** You don’t deserve… ** This must change for me to be …   more »

This is my response to a Wall Street Journal Article by Jared Sandberg entitled “Some Office Coaches Whitewash Miseries with Sunny Platitudes.” The web address of the original article: Some Office Coaches Whitewash Miseries with Sunny Platitudes The above captioned article was recently published in The Wall Street Journal and has been the buzz of the coaching community. I felt that the article was very indicative of the overall confusion regarding the life coaching process, and warranted a full response. In essence, I felt it was a very good article that inaccurately, yet understandably, misdirected its criticism towards life coaching. The entire article and my responses are shown below.    more »

With the recent hurricanes, Katrina and Rita, many Americans on the Gulf Coast were thrust into a major, abrupt life transition. The enormity of this catastrophe is yet to be known. No doubt, many people’s lives will be changed dramatically. In coaching, we are in the business of transition, helping our clients to maneuver through a wide variety of life transitions. There has been much discussion within the coaching industry about how coaches can help. It’s evident that basic human needs of food, water, shelter, and clothing are most critical at this time. And, at some point, people will be ready to move forward..to rebuild…or to reinvent their lives.   more »

Sometimes before we can start to work on our significant life goals, we need to clear space for great things to come into our lives. We all lead fast paced lives today, and I have found that it becomes very helpful to look at what things we are tolerating, and to start to eliminate these energy drains of our lives. Every action we take uses energy. What we don't always recognize, is that the actions we don't take use energy as well. It may be mental or emotional energy, but it's energy that could be used in a more positive way. Tolerations are what we put up with...the unfinished business of life. They make us irritable and wear us down.    more »