Health
Are You A Bouncing Ball? … Checking In On You!
I have had several people recently tell me in their own unique ways that they felt something like a bouncing ball in life. Trying to juggle work, school, health and family responsibilities can be overwhelming, leaving someone to feel out of balance, disconnected and unfocused. Many of us can get caught up in busy and active lives. We start treading water and just surviving rather than making purposeful choices and actions with ourselves and others. This can be slippery slope in any relationship. I think it’s important to take a quick...
read morePlaying full out!
This is a video of the great Maya Plisetskaya dancing the dying Swan. She is 61 here. You see her dancing like this at 61 and you think to yourself: “There’s a woman who plays full out! Who is living life to the fullest! Squeezing the juice out of life!” You are probably imagining her activity filled days, her rehearsals and the rigorous training she still has to undergo to keep her body and her skills at a high performance level. This is someone who clearly pushes her own limits! But here are her own words as she describes working for...
read moreSo what is coaching exactly?
What is coaching? Coaching is the practice of supporting, challenging and empowering an individual or group/team through the process of achieving a specific personal or professional result via cutting edge strategies and change techniques. It is distinct from training and mentoring, in that the coach/client relationship is one of trust, accountability and responsiveness. Training is teaching an individual or group how to achieve a result by imparting practical skills and knowledge that relate to specific useful competencies, while mentoring is...
read moreShopping for a Coach?
I love shopping! I don’t care what it is, I’ll offer to help my friends shop. Need a car? Oh, let me go online and research for you! Need to find the perfect dress? Please, let me go with you! Yes, I love to shop! Shopping for a coach? Well, maybe not so much. But, I look at this this way…. When it comes to choosing a life coach, finding the right one for you is like finding the right running shoes. Sometimes, off and running, you find a pair that fit just right. But, sometimes you have to try on a couple pair and...
read moreFeel the fear…
What is your experience of fear? Is it fear that you will fail, or arguably more common, that you will succeed? Is it keeping you small, feeding itself on the negative self-talk of ‘not good enough’, ‘not accepted’, or ‘not loved’? What if, instead of STOP, whenever fear showed up it meant GO FOR IT! There is only one antidote to fear – and that is to do the very thing you fear. Don’t wait for courage to appear to overcome the fear. Courage comes from acknowledging the fear and acting in spite...
read moreAnger and the Role of Forgiveness
Anger is a human emotion. It is strongly linked to rage, and all of us have experienced it in some form since we were children. We are taught as children that anger and rage are not OK, and so we learn very early on and very skilfully to hide our anger and our rage. Anger is also linked to fear. It is often a fear response that triggers an angry outburst, and is part of the fight or flight response. But fighting and retreating are actions that we take in response to an external threat. These actions are inbuilt into our system, and exist in...
read moreBe Yourself… REALLY Be Yourself
You know, it’s pretty hard to live with passion when you’re just not be being true to yourself. If we feel compelled to act or behave or be what we believe others expect of us or would like from us, then we aren’t being true to ourselves and chances are we aren’t all that happy, either. We are stifling our own energy, creativity, spontaneity, contribution, and love among other qualities that as a whole are special or unique to ourselves. If we have to become someone else just to fit in or get along, then haven’t...
read moreStuck in a Pattern you can’t get out of
You will never know who you really are and what power you have if you never take a chance. There’s a part of you that is always fearful and only looks in the short term that screams murder when you want to do something that is potentially threatening to your survival. Let’s call it Mini You because that’s what it really is: the minimal version of you. According to Mini You a lot of things are scary: bungee jumping, driving a fast car, scuba diving but also a new job, a better relationship, going for your dream to live in another...
read moreResponding or Reacting to the World in Crisis
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” – Viktor Frankl There have been many natural catastrophes that have occurred in recent months, on our shores and across the globe. Floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, erupting volcanoes, tsunamis and civil wars that we see nightly on the news and which we feel compelled to offer some response to. The proliferation of communication technologies ensure that we are confronted...
read moreAdventure Parable #01: Anxiety, Variety, Afghanistan, Grace
What do you do when you have that gnawing feeling in the pit of your stomach? Do you “try” to push it away, ignore it, analyze it, eat, exercise, complain—or do something that brings a feeling of certainty? What if this anxiety, worry, dissatisfaction is a signal for the best way to find joy, wellbeing and deep purpose in your life? **** In Afghanistan in the early eighties there is a young woman carrying old film equipment, a wind-up 16 mm Bolex camera, traveling on her own with the tall strong Moujahadeen fighters. They are...
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