Top ten reasons you need a life coach!

1. Coaching is a different kind of conversation – It’s not like a discussion you’d have with your boss, a trusted friend, or even a seasoned mentor. Probably the closest example is the conversation someone might have with a therapist. A coaching discussion is about you and the possibility and potential that might come from the coaching process. Coaches build trust early on, so a client is comfortable opening up and can honestly evaluate the necessary action to move them forward toward their desired goals. One powerful example of the type of connection a coach establishes early on with the client is the bench scene from the Oscar winning movie, “Good Will Hunting.”
2. People are lying to you – You have blind spots that you are unaware of – everyone does. A blind spot is defined as information that is known to others about you, but not known to yourself. Others can see our shortcomings that are not as obvious to ourselves. Marshall Goldsmith, who charges up to $200,000 per coaching engagement and only gets paid if the results are accomplished, sums this point up nicely when he says, “Almost everyone I meet is successful because of doing a lot right, and almost everyone I meet is successful in spite of some behavior that doesn’t make any sense.”
3. Success in life is all about relationships – Successful people understand that whether you work for someone or not, you’ll only be as successful as the relationships you build. This is not new to anyone, but I think many of us don’t give enough thought to identifying the key stakeholders that may help or hinder our success. If there are key relationships that are causing you frustration, even if it’s your boss, a coach can help you look at different ways to address this challenge.
4. Coaches help you see your real potential, clearly – If you’re like most people, you probably secretly believe you are capable of achieving much more that you currently are. Coaches help you examine your thinking to see where it’s flawed and where there is an opportunity to advance in the direction of your dreams. Sometimes all a coach needs to do is ask the right question – matter of fact, coaching really is all about asking questions that perpetuate learning and exploring what’s possible for the client. When Coach Herb Brooks wanted the 1980 United States hockey team to examine the possibility of beating the Russians, he mentioned over and over again, “Someone’s going to beat those guys.” Watching the locker room scene here, played by Kurt Russell in the movie, “Miracle.”
5. Life is just a story we tell ourselves – Life really is just a made up story we tell ourselves. People look at life through a lens that artificially distorts reality. In their excellent book titled “The Art of Possibility,” Ben and Roz Zander say it beautifully: “… Many of the circumstances that seem to block us in our daily lives may only appear to do so based on a framework of assumptions we carry with us. Draw a different frame around the same set of circumstances and new pathways come to view. Find the right framework and extraordinary accomplishment becomes everyday experience.”
6. You’re insane – At least according to the definition of insanity which we’ve all heard – doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Psychologists say that 90 percent of the thoughts you have today will be the same as yesterday. Life is about habits and coaches can help you examine what action you can take tomorrow that will produce very different results than today.
7. A slight shift in your perspective may make a huge difference – Wayne Dyer says, “Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.” Sometimes the way we approach a discussion, with our intention and opinions established beforehand, will dictate the potential outcome. Even in business the way you measure success can make a difference. Jack Welch changed GE’s famous vision of being number 1 or 2 in each of the business units once an outsider pointed out that defining success that way would limit growth. He later challenged his business unit leaders to never define their marketplace goals in such a way that GE’s business would ever be comprised of more than 10 percent of the total market. Watch as Robin Williams demonstrates shifting student’s perspective in this scene from “Dead Poets Society.”
8. You have limiting beliefs that are holding you back – Many people place a limit on what’s possible for them based on past experience and beliefs that were developed years ago during childhood. Most of the recent self-help financial books all point out this phenomenon. T. Harv Ecker calls this the ‘process of manifestation’ in the “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind.” The formula is as follows:
   P > T > F > A = R

   where P is your programming (experiences and limiting beliefs), which lead to your thoughts (T), which lead to your feelings (F), which lead to your actions (A), and your actions lead to your results (R).

9. You may be a crap magnet- The law of attraction, which has been talked about extensively for the last few years because of books like “The Secret,” by Rhonda Byrne, describe this belief. It basically says that like attracts like and you are capable of being, doing, and having anything you desire, if you focus your attention the right way on your desired outcome. However you refer to this, it is hard to ignore the overwhelming use of this process, especially in sports, where visioning the desired outcome has been used successfully with Olympic and professional athletes for decades. The opposite is also true, that if you focus on a negative outcome, many times you will get what you’re focused on. This is kind of like the self-fulfilling prophecy that people refer to.
10. Coaches provide insight – A coach can see things that you don’t. Here’s an example not from a coaching exchange, but between a Hollywood movie director and actor. Dustin Hoffman described an acting challenge he had while filming “Rain Man” to James Lipton on “Inside the Actors Studio.” Apparently, Dustin was having a very difficult time connecting to the autistic character he portrayed in the film and was not happy with his performance at all. He described how each time he and fellow actor Tom Cruise would go off script and ad lib, he found it difficult to stay in character. At one point feeling frustrated he just said a long drawn out “Yeah” in response to Tom’s exchange. Dustin did not even realize it until the director pulled him behind the camera and said “do that.” Dustin said it was like someone turned on a switch – “everything flowed once he found that one insight. If you’ve seen the movie, you know that he used that expression throughout the film and won an Oscar for his performance.

This article was written and borrowed from : Michael Slade at 24 hour coach.com.  Michael is a human resource executive and internal executive coach at a top 100 marketing communications agency.

Being the parent this time

I was sitting at my kitchen table
Thursday morning, talking on the phone to my insurance company when my 28-year-old daughter came bursting in the house saying, “where is she?  Where is my daughter? ”  Now her voice was raised and by the look on her face, I assumed that she was angry and upset. 

The last time I saw my daughter was to drop her off at the airport, after convincing her to bring my grand baby back, and to leave her with her father, since my daughter was running from the law, and from people who she said wanted to kill her.  That was some 6-8 months earlier this year, since then, I hadn’t had a word from her, on where she was or how she was. 

I tried to talk in my confused and surprised moment, I managed to say, “your daughter is I would imagine in school right now”, yet she was still looking about the house as if she thought her daughter was with me.  Another state away, her daughter is in school, and living about the most normal life she has had in all her life.  This was at the time,  a decision my daughter had made, and a very good one for her daughter as well.  Yet here we were, I confused and feeling threatened. 

My daughter was in my face yelling at me, repeating one line over and over again, “the kind of school you sent me to!”   Still confused as thoughts were rambling through my head trying to figure out what she was talking about, the public school?  i interjected that “this baby is with her father because she was in danger when she was with you on the run”…and that is when it happened, she looked me right in the eye, and came close to me and said, “at the moment your life is in danger!”. 

She was moving quickly, and stepping in and out of the porch right next to the kitchen, and at some point I jumped up and locked the door and ran grabbing my cell phone to a bedroom and locking the door, while calling 911 for some assistance.

They arrived and my daughter was gone. 

Saturday morning we awoke to the dogs barking and she was standing outside the dining room window.  I could barely make out who she was, or what she was saying to me.  I did hear her say, “come on out here, we are going to settle this thing right here and right now.”  I said “You need to leave.”  About that time, my husband said she has a can of gas, and I saw her head toward our horse arena where we just filled up our years supply of hay for ten horses.  My husband ran out of the house and thats when she ran back to her car, put the can of gas in the back seat, and backed up, and took off. 

Another call to 911 and the car chase was on, that ended with her pouring gas in the car, and on the car and then on herself.  She lit the car on fire and the police managed to tackle her and knock the lighter out of her hand before she could light herself on fire. 

I woke up in the morning thinking HOW.  Thinking that is the question parents like me have, how am I going to handle this, how am I going to deal with, and get through all of this intact and not lose my mind.  How am I going to face friends and family and the people I work with.  What are they going to think about me, what does this say about me, and my parenting? 

This has afterall been my mission, working with parents of troubled kids, helping them to cope when their child acts and behaves insanely.  Most of my personal experiences have been in the past, when she was younger, but here  it was again, looking me in the face, challenging me to go deeper and stand in my truth, to stand there and examine everything I have learned and have been teaching other parents- first hand, to see what I do and how it really works.  Does it really work, and yes it does!  Life coaching really does work to keep me sane, keep me balanced, and keep me from beating myself up.  It even works to keep me from beating up my daughter, emotionally. 

I can step back, and choose to believe that there is some deeper meaning in all of this.  I can choose to step back and love her, while standing up for myself.  I can choose a path that offers me peace-of-mind, or I can do what I use to do in the early years and suffer migraines, loss workdays, isolate, and cry a lot. 

What is happening for you today?  Where can I help you to sort things out and feel a sense of sanity in your life and your experience with a child who is out of control?  I am here for you, I am one of you, and I understand.  Contact me today and lets talk and figure out where life coaching can help you feel normal again, even if your child is not!

Love and light always to you!~Cheryl

What have I done wrong?

Wondering what in the heck you did wrong as a parent?  Asking yourself all sorts of questions about what you should, would or could of done differently with your child?  Are you feeling responsible underneath it all for the lack of self esteem, or self love your child is portraying?

This is a tough place to be, and a painful one as well.  It is normal to feel some of this, when you watch a child who perhaps is taking the wrong direction through life. 

Did it ever occur to you that your child has a path and a destination to reach in life that you are not in control of?  That you can not foresee?  That you may not ever understand? 

Everyone of us has to go through unique experiences to learn the things we need later on in our life, later on in our mission here on Earth and beyond.  We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

Find the support and encouragement to expand you ability to love unconditionally and support your child as they walk their own unexpected path through life!  http://theunexpectedpath.com

Why get support?

One of the biggest mistakes being done with treatment is the over looking and neglect of the family.  It is tradition to send the member who is using away to treatment, to get “fixed”, and then return them to a family who is still shattered by the effects of the addiction.

The family is neglected completely, and what is worse, is the child returns home and slowly falls right back into the previous pattern within the family.

The addict feels like a failure once again, and the parents are filled with a sense of helplessness and despair as they realize they haven’t the tools or the skills needed to change anything. 

This is why The Unexpected Path Your Child is Walking is so crucially needed.  We support the parents, by helping them work through their own stuff that was created or came to a head with the addiction.  If you want to get behind your child and be able to support them, you need to learn how, and do the work nessacary to bring about a new environment, and a new relationship that doesn’t support the addiction any longer!

Which lens are you using?

what view do you have on the world?

When you look at the world, which lens are you seeing it through?
Each of you have a lens, or a filter which you view your life through. This lens is made up of all the thoughts and ideas and judgments you have made from your experiences with life, and with people in your life.
Perhaps your lens is a lens of an abandand child, or a child who was brought up by a single parent. Maybe you have a lens of a child who had two very busy parents, and you did not see them as often as you wished to. Perhaps you have a lens which you view yourself as a nerd, a brainiac, or an atheletic person. What ever lens you have been using does not mean you have to use it forever.
You can switch out your lens for a new one! You can try on a few of them, and find that is more comfortable, or much more fun! You can exchange your lens many times if you like during your life, you do not have to be stuck with the same lens for the rest of your days here!
Which lens would you like to try on today?

help for parents

Feeling the pain

“While we are busy trying to fix their addiction, we don’t even realize our lives were falling apart.”
Piece by precious piece families crumble as the destruction from the addiction rolls through their homes,
running nearly everything down. The destruction an addiction has within the family is profound.
A home quickly becomes a housing unit, with a feel of hollow darkness. Loneliness, isolation, and
sadness settle in where once there was rambunctious laughing, squeals of being tickled, feet hitting
the floor pitter patter running from end of the home to the other.
Addiction shatters the delicate balance within the home. Respect self and others dries and disappears.
Tensions mount, emotions erupt, tears flow, screams echo through, chores left undone.
There is an emptiness even while filled with bodies. There is an underlying deep hollow empty painful
sense of missing something one once held, once shared, once felt.
So much is lost.
so very much is lost…

What are you feeling?

Are you feeling sad? Lonely? Depressed? Not understood? Misunderstood? Frustrated?
Many parents feel like the worse parents on the planet when their child becomes addicted to drugs. Some feel inadequate, or even “stupid”. Some feel they “should of” known what to say, what to do, and how to solve the problem.
Addiction is a BIG problem that can quickly become one of those out of control monsters, it can overwhelm, and destroy what was once a happy little family. For some families, it can slowly creep in and seem like a small problem from time to time, and become increasingly a larger problem with each seperate event, until it is way out of anyones control.
Where as other families, addiction comes shows up more like a hurricane, or a tornado, where it quickly forms and runs everything over in its path. There is no time to find shelter, everyone is hit and hit hard.
What are you feeling right now in this moment? What is going on for you and your family? Where do you need some assistance and support?

Chaos creates energy for change

Enable-calling readers to help me…

I have this deep stirring to write about the word enable, yet I can not seem to put it together, one thought takes me far away, while another thought touches a little part of it.  Perhaps if I post this, in all of its unformed pieces, I can ask the readers here to help me out, to examine these pieces and comment on where they might take the reader.   What comes up for you as you read the pieces in the rough.  Do you feel triggered, do you feel attached to holding onto something as you read?  Do you want to protect and defend the word?  Going to the deeper part of enable.

One of the most profound things I have witnessed over the years is the power in which the word”enable” carries with it. The word has been used in such a negative dis empowering way within our culture, and has been tagged, and repeated, and simply has caught on in such a way that it has a familiarity to most if not all adults in America at least, I can not say for the rest of the world.

Just hearing the word brings up thoughts, feelings, and emotions for many.

It stirs the senses, the guilt, and shame and curiosity in many.  What crossed your mind as a reader when you begin this article, when you read the title,  or the topic, when you noticed the word, “enable”?

One the more popular places this is used is within the therapy world, twelve step groups and codependency groups around the country.  It goes hand and hand with building boundaries, and the whole mind set of separation.  These words are used and worked out on the surface level,  motivated to empower people to control their loved ones by means of changing their own behavior.  A simple example would be;  If I change my behavior (I can in to work and make excuses for him) of calling into work for him, he will reap the full consequences of whatever he is doing that gets in his way of going to work, and once he reaps this own consequences this will add pressure which may cause him to take more responsibility for and eliminate whatever that is that is getting in his way of work.

Thus I stop taking responsibility by calling in, and he is then able to choose to be responsible or not responsible for keeping his own job.

The issue I have with this is not that it may be such an obvious thing here, and in many cases.  For instance am I really taking responsibility for myself?  Do I stop and work out the fears I have which motivate me to “call into work” for him.  Where is my own ego when I am thinking and holding a judgement that “he” is in the wrong and I am in the right.  There is so much opportunity for self discovery within this, why oh why would I simply waste this to focus outside myself on “him”…

There is another issue, the deep shame this word brings up for many, especially parents.  I think it can be quite harmful.There is a common thread throughout our society in which we allow ego to run our lives.  We separate to protect ourselves, and this is popular, yet doesn’t it add to the world of dis harmony and unrest?  Doesn’t this thought generate a deeper belief that it is alright to put up a boundary and close ourselves off to those whom we judge as less than ourselves, as somehow being in the wrong, so we can be in the right!

This thought, idea, useage promotes this illusion of seperation, that feeds the ego, and takes us farther from the truth, farther from connection, love and the power of us being ONE with one another.

If we are to heal and become a peaceful society, we need to awaken to our use of such words, and the power these words carry with them.  I can not carry the message of love to another if I am shaming myself or them in any sense of the word.  This harming another, or ourselves does not add to world peace.

Again, please help me by sharing your own thoughts and knowledge.  We can together heal this planet one step at a time, one word, one thought, one change in our own lives can ignite a fire!

Much love and light always!~Cheryl