Archive for the ‘keys to success’ Category

Every now and again we all experience a really crappy day. One of those days where everything and everybody seem to have conspired against you and nothing goes right. Your car breaks down, your daughter has a temper tantrum, your spouse is upset, you forget your umbrella and get soaking wet in the rain and on and on it goes.

Every now and again you may even feel crappy for no apparent reason at all and that can be challenging. I have certainly experienced it and really questioned my feelings, because there were no external circumstances that could justify my unhappiness.

Right in the midst of one of these terrible days, you may wish to bury your head in the sand and reappear tomorrow; you worry though that tomorrow may be just as miserable.

Here is my tried and true remedy. This acknowledgement really works and it can even be fun:

1. The first step is to recognize “I am having a really crappy day, ta da!” Acknowledge the obvious: “I am feeling really crappy, I wish I could stick my head in the sand and be gone.”
2. Then get curious about crappy. Where do you feel it in your body? What is this sensation like? Is it tense, heavy, painful? What kind of pain? Is it dull or sharp?
3. Stay with the sensation and continue to be curious about it. As you stay with this sensation, does the sensation change? If so, in what way? Is it moving to a different part of your body? Is it becoming more or less intense? Is the quality of the sensation changing (e.g. from dull to sharp)? Simply notice what you are experiencing right now and stay with it.
4. If you are still feeling crappy, imagine giving yourself a hug, as if you were taking care of a crying child. Wrap your arms around you and embrace yourself in this state of unhappiness. Remember that no matter how unhappy you feel right now, that this too shall pass.
5. Then look at your day with fresh eyes, what is the next task ahead? Give this task your full attention.

You may have to repeat these five steps a few times throughout your day. Every time you do your day will feel a little less crappy, just like a heavy dark cloud lifting and drifting away with the wind.

Years ago I heard about a school that was experiencing a lot of littering. The students didn’t care to throw their wraps in the garbage cans and penalties didn’t seem to solve the problem.  Then one teacher came up with the idea to put baskets, much like basketball baskets, above the garbage cans. The students soon discovered that throwing garbage in the cans was a really fun game. They were excited about the challenge to throw their garbage into the cans and soon the school was spotless.

I was reminded of this story last weekend, when my partner John made his way from the bedroom to the kitchen playing soccer with a plastic bag until he reached the recycling bin. What a fun way to take care of recycling. John is my inspiration when it comes to turning chores into play-time. Personally, I love to turn on some great Latin music and dance as I mop the floors. It makes cleaning so much more fun.

We grown-ups can take ourselves and the game called life too serious at times. Lighten up and reconnect with the child within you, (s)he knows how to turn chores into fun. Here’s how you create a game out of otherwise mundane and boring tasks that you might dread and therefore put off:

• Connect to the child within you and ask how (s)he would approach the task at hand.
• If you have a hard time getting in touch with your inner child, ask yourself how a child you know might approach this chore.
• Listen carefully.
• Then follow her/his advice and have fun with it.

Please post your most creative ideas here for other readers to be inspired. I will reward to most intriguing idea with an e-book of The Mini-Retreat Solution.

With the Canadian Thanksgiving just behind us and the American Thanksgiving ahead, I am filled with gratitude for this wonderful, mysterious, surprising and at times challenging life. I feel so very blessed to do what I love and make my living doing just that. I am reminded once again of just how different life felt, when I found my labour of love, life coaching, by working with my very first life coach over eight years ago. The best analogy I can think of is the difference between night and day.

I love to support my clients in arriving in the light of clarity about their strengths, values and passion and craft their career based on that. I am thrilled to offer a class on that very subject of FINDING CAREER CLARITY beginning in just a few weeks at Oaklands Neighbourhood House, here in Victoria.

The class is quickly filling up, so please take this opportunity and think about the people in your circle in Victoria and their friends whose lives may be changed for the better, simply by participating in this class. Life is too short to compromise!

Here are the class details:

Finding Career Clarity

Learn how to:
• Get in touch with your passion, strengths, values and dreams
• Make your path to success meaningful and enriching
• Design the next steps on your professional path

WHERE: Oaklands Neighbourhood House, #1 – 2827 Belmont Avenue, Victoria, BC
WHEN: Tuesdays, 7 – 8:30 pm, Nov. 8 – Dec. 6, 2011
Space is limited, to register call 250-370-9101

When I was in grade 8, I took part in a gardening school project and was very excited about my first little vegetable garden. Every day I went to check, water and weed my little patch. It was pure joy seeing the little plants grow.

One day I arrived at my patch with my watering can to see that all my little lettuce plants had been eaten. I was so sad. When I heard from Sonia, the social worker who headed the garden project at our high school that Rob, a grade 9 student had purposefully pushed his little rabbit into the lettuce plants to destroy my garden, I felt quite angry.

Rob was very aggressive and destroyed things on purpose all the time. I was quite upset and shared my anger with Sonia. She said that she could understand my feelings. She also shared with me another side of Rob that I had never known about or seen before. She told me that he often came to her to ask for a hug and to cry on her shoulder and that he really felt quite insecure.

I was still upset about my lost lettuce plants, but I learnt that day that what appears as power and aggression on the outside might be a manifestation of  loneliness, fear and despair on the inside. I was thankful that Sonia had opened my eyes and helped me see beyond Rob’s actions in the garden patch.

I always remember this story when I am faced with aggressive and destructive behaviour. I know that it is coming from a place of fear. Knowing this helps me see the person who is acting in aggressive ways more compassionately.

When I feel compassion with their pain, I don’t get triggered into fear or anger myself. That doesn’t mean that I agree with destructive behaviour or justify it in any way. It simply means that I connect with the underlying cause of this behaviour. From that place, I can feel compassion and no longer feel scared or threatened by the behaviour.

How to move from anger to compassion:

• Take a moment to think about a person who is acting angry or aggressive (this may be at work, in your family or within your community).
• Allow yourself to imagine the pain, hurt, sadness and fear that this person may be feeling inside.
• Remember times in your own life when you felt scared and how you acted towards others or yourself at the time. Feel compassion for yourself and hold yourself as if you were soothing an upset child.
• Then send the same compassion towards the other person and imagine them feeling well and content.

Canadians are known for being nice. One of my clients found herself in a situation where her usual way of being nice and doing things she thought were expected of her left her with a bitter taste of resentment. To her, being a good friend, colleague and relative meant being nice and doing what was expected of her at all times. It dawned on her that her need to be nice got in the way of recognizing and attending to her own needs.

She started to pay attention to her feelings before she responded to someone’s request. Did she feel excited, joyful or happy about giving her time, resources and energy to fulfill this person’s request or did she feel torn? If she felt great, she went ahead and did it. If she felt unsure, she allowed herself a bit of time and told the person she would get back to them later.

Over time, she realized that she felt better about her decisions and so can you!

In the words of Dr. Seuss: “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.”

Feeling overwhelmed seems to be a constant in most people’s lives today. Too much work, endless to-do lists, too many demands, too many bills to pay, too much!  This may lead to feeling helpless and unable to do anything.

When faced with the challenge of too much, we often think that we have to take big steps according to the magnitude of how overwhelmed we feel. It may seem counter-intuitive; however, small simple steps will make the biggest difference over time. This concept is also known as the domino effect.

Small steps that you can take right away to start a positive domino effect in your life: Read the rest of this entry »

It has been an a-May-zing May so far! It began with election day in Canada on May 2nd. We witnessed Green Party leader, Elizabeth May, become the first elected Green Party Member of Parliament in Canada. Her leadership and presence are truly inspiring. This historical moment is an excellent reminder that positive change is possible, even when the odds seem stacked against us.

I feel so privileged to witness the positive changes my clients create in their lives every day. Many of my clients didn’t believe it was possible or that they had what it takes to find fulfilling work, meaningful relationships and achieve a healthy balance in their lives before they engaged in the coaching relationship.

Once we begin to create desirable changes, we realize that through one choice at a time, positive change is achievable.  Read some of my clients’ success stories for inspiration. And since we can create positive change on a personal level, we can create it on a national and global level, one step at a time.

This Easter weekend I spent some time gardening. It was a beautiful sunny day and so warm that I was comfortable in my T-shirt, jeans and bare feet. What a treat! I was in the midst of pulling weeds when I discovered to my great surprise a few sugar peas that were barely two inches tall.

I had stuck the seeds into the ground about a month ago and after two weeks of regular checks I had given up on them, thinking that the seeds might have been too old. I looked at the little shoots with their tender leaves with pure joy. I thought to myself: “This is so much better than chocolate eggs”, which is a strong statement coming from a chocolate lover.

My curiosity was peaked and I went around the garden looking in all the other areas where I had buried sugar peas that day in early March. I found about a dozen more sugar pea shoots. This was better and felt more rewarding than any Easter egg hunt I have ever been on.

What surprise gifts are hiding in your garden of life? What seeds have you planted months or years ago and maybe forgotten about? Take a wander, do some weeding and you might be positively surprised to find the most beautiful treasures right where you are.

Enjoy!

From time to time I receive requests for tips from people who are thinking of becoming a life coach.

Here are my top 12 tips:

1. Hire a coach and experience coaching as a client. This will help you:
2. Gain experience of what it is like to be coached and an appreciation of the power of the coaching process.
   • Gain experience of what it is like to be coached and an appreciation of the power of the coaching process.
   • Get clarity on whether this profession is for you and if so, how you can move forward and take the necessary steps towards becoming a coach.
   • Identify what it is that you want to bring to the world as a coach. Coaching is merely a tool. It is important to clarify your bigger vision is, so you may have assurance that life coaching fits precisely into that vision, if in fact it does.
   • Having experienced coaching as a client will make it much easier and more natural for you to learn the coaching tools and apply them as a coach. It will give you more appreciation for what your potential future clients might experience.
3. Research coaching online. A great place to start your research is the International Coach Federation (ICF).
4. As you are doing your research, keep a log of all of the important questions that arise.
5. If you are thinking of creating your own business as a coach, research what is involved with owning and operating a small business. There are lots of resources online and most cities have small business centres that provide information and support.
6. Many of the answers to your questions may be found online. Use the power of the Internet to efficiently find the information you seek.
7. Identify 10-15 coaches who inspire you. Read their websites and learn about what they do.
8. Create 5-10 questions that you can ask these coaches (refer to your log of questions from your online research) and schedule informational interviews with them, or send your questions via e-mail. The more specific the questions, the easier it is for the coaches to quickly answer them for you.
9. Find out if there is a local ICF chapter in your city and if so, find out when and where the monthly meeting takes place and attend as a guest.
10. Research the ICF accredited schools of coaching. They can all be found on the ICF website. Review the websites of coaching schools  and call them to ask your specific questions.
11. Enroll in the coaching program that best aligns with your style of learning and the kind of coaching you prefer.
12. Once in the coaching program, take the extra step and initiate a coaching circle, where you get together with your classmates on the phone and coach each other. You will get more experience and feedback from this process and it will deepen your learning.
13. During this entire process, stay in touch with the level of excitement, passion and energy you feel. If your energy increases, this is a good indication that you are on your path; if your energy drains, coaching might not be for you.

All the best on your journey!

It is fascinating that the expression “to swim against the stream” is a metaphor for making choices in life that go against prevailing opinions. This is considered to be a challenge that is hard to attain. How interesting that we perceive natural phenomena to be difficult.

When we think of salmon swimming upstream back to their place of birth or the thousands of miles birds travel to migrate, we see them as enormous undertakings. However, I wonder if it is even possible for healthy salmon to choose not to return to the river that is their spawning grounds?  Could a healthy migratory bird think “hmmm, maybe I’ll just stay put this winter here in Canada, rather than flying all the way to Mexico”?

It is natural for the salmon to swim upstream. Yes, it takes a lot of energy, but this energy is expended in a manner that maximizes life fulfillment.

As humans our challenge is to get back in touch with the activities that come naturally to us. When we are out of touch with our natural strengths and desires, we settle for a life filled with activities that drain us. Many of us have forgotten our innate strengths, the activities we can engage in for hours without feeling exhausted. Activities that energize us and that we are naturally good at even though they might be perceived as challenging by others.

How to reconnect with the salmon within you:

1. Look back in your life and identify the activities that you enjoyed  most as a child. Go ahead and write these activities down. They may  provide important clues for the kinds of activities that may energize  you today.
2. Now, think about the jobs you have done in your  life so far. For each job, identify the activities that energized you  most and add these to your list.
3. Then think about your  personal life, hobbies and volunteer activities. Which activities  energize you the most? Add these to your list.
4. Now, look at  your list of insights. What small step will you take today to increase  the time you spend doing things that energize you?

The energy you gain from engaging in these activities will provide the fuel to continue on the path of exploring your natural strengths. Soon, you will find yourself eager to swim against the stream, just like the salmon.

When you get stuck on your path of exploration, ask for support from a life coach. Often we take our greatest gifts for granted and think that there is nothing special or worthwhile about that which comes naturally to us. I would be delighted to give you forty minutes of my undivided attention to explore how I might help you identify your strengths so they may be applied toward maximizing fulfillment within your life.

* The Coho Salmon was photographed by David Blevins