So what happens if you or a client is stuck in a job or some other situation that they can’t see a way of changing right away and it’s hard or boring or annoying or some other not enjoyable feeling? Sometimes on no-work mornings my husband asks me to put on my coach’s hat and help him through a situation as I would a client. So this morning over coffee he reiterated his situation: he teaches high school and this semester he has not had much success in the teaching material department. Usually, although his population of kids are inner city bi-lingual and not up to where we’d like to see them in high school, he has successes all through the semester to give him (and his ego) happiness at his achievements as a teacher. This semester it just isn’t happening that way and as a result, he’s not been having a very enjoyable time.

What’s the coach to suggest? (Of course this little article will take you a minute to read and the “coaching session” took an hour, so don’t get the impression that I get asked a question and then just jump to an answer. Then I’d be the “answer woman” not the coach.) It came down to two main things:

1. He has something very special to offer the kids whether they are learning the material or not. And that is he respects them and they are not usually treated that way. That impression that he makes on them will follow them throughout their life whereas Physics probably won’t.
2. He has to be the parent or whoever is in charge of keeping his ego satisfied. It wants to see outer success. So he needs to keep telling it that it is succeeding by looking at the impact he’s had on other kids and feeding his ego the facts it wants to justify its existence and desire to protect him.

How can these two tips be applied to you or anyone you are coaching when they are enjoying a certain situation?

1. Find the purpose within your life relating to any situation.
2. Stay in charge of your ego and give it what it needs.

They Never Tell You This Part

Someone in my life has had almost lifelong issues with asking for what he wants which sometimes translates into lots of fear around standing up for what he knows is right. Since he too has a Life Is a School attitude, he uses his well-developed Observer to watch himself go through the fear and ineffective thoughts, feelings and behaviors when something like car trouble comes up.

He has a manufacturer warranty, a warranty from the local car place he bought the car from and additionally he bought a 4-year warranty to add onto all of that. Last week the car broke down and he has not had the use of it for a week.

After he went through all the thoughts and judgments and feelings about being a lousy car chooser (when he loves his reputation as a great researcher and knower about cars) he was up against his fear of standing up for what he wants – one of the three companies to get on the stick and get the car fixed for him.

This morning he continued his work on changing his thoughts and feelings about all of this – determined to overcome his reticence and this is what happened:

• He went to work and immediately ran into a former attorney he knows who told him how to take the case to small claims court if need be

• He called the local dealer where the car is and found out the process for repair has begun and he should have the car by tomorrow!
• Conclusions : he created a different outcome by working on his thoughts and feelings and his Observer was able to help him with that.

So what’s the part that few people talk about when they teach Law of Attraction?

The might tell you:

1. your thoughts create your feelings and
2. your feelings create your vibration and your creations will match your vibration but
3. they never seem to tell you that a Life Is a School attitude helps you create more and more expanded awareness – it helps you become aware of the objective Observer that lives in our consciousness which allows you to stay out of denial and let’s you know how you are creating.

The Life Coach Boost

Get started boosting your self esteem by hiring a life coach. Since a life coach usually helps people with any and all areas of life from career to finances to overeating, all of the work that you do with a life coach will eventually lead back to your self esteem and help to slowly (or quickly) increase it.

A life coach will:

• Help you focus on the positive
• Show you that you are deserving of all good
• Challenge you to reach for what you are worthy of
• Challenge you to reach for what you want
• Point out the positive attributes that you take for granted about yourself
• Gently (or not so gently) tell you the truth about where you are kidding yourself

As you work with the coach and overcome challenges that you face and reach the goals you set out, your regular experience of the focus just being on you with your life coach, will continue to help you raise your self esteem. The life coach will be someone other than yourself that will help make sure that you are held accountable until eventually as your self esteem and self confidence increases, you can learn to hold yourself accountable for your actions and learn to change the negative, critical voices in your head.

I’m just becoming aware maybe at a deeper level than I have been before the pitfalls of what is often called a spiritual bypass. I take it to mean the desire to go directly to spiritual feelings, explanations and thoughts without experiencing the feelings in between.  (Much prettier and less messy – like the picture to the left. It’s even decorated with a flower.) Here are some examples of how we do it to ourselves:

• We are so scared of feelings, we use something to keep us from having them. It might be a substance or might be just a way of clenching down and keeping them out.

• We decide we are so healed and have done so much work on ourselves and our past, we don’t need to go there any more.

• Since we didn’t have a very rough past, we think we aren’t like those others who did and we don’t really have any feelings much to deal with

I think that about covers it. (You know who you are.) Anyway, that being said, I’m going to copy what I wrote just a bit ago:

“Nobody wants to let me talk about my fears of death or let me muddle my way into acceptance. I just looked up throat in Louise Hay. It says, ‘avenue of expression. Channel of creativity.’ So that’s why my throat hurts and I feel like I’ve lost my creativity like a little cat who might be in the house somewhere under a bed hiding but also might be gone – even dead. So I’ve been enjoying editing what I’ve already written and being amazed that I wrote what I wrote and expressed it so well. Maybe this fear is what is holding back my flow. Not the fear so much, but the lack of expressing it. It feels like my faucet is almost closed.

So here goes:

I am afraid of dying. What if it hurts? What if there is nothing after? What if I’m not really spiritual, just afraid of dying? What if Bart’s cold body is in our bed? Who would I call? What would I say? How would I call Anna? What if I become too needy and my kids don’t want to be bothered? What if the pain of Bart’s dying is so sharp it ruins me? What if death disrupts my life? What if he gets sick and can’t work or is non-functioning? What if I do? What will happen? I feel like I’m up against a wall of water like the parting of the Red Sea and I’m running out of the steam to keep it at bay – my positive grateful attitude is wearing thin – gratitude with feeling is hard to find. Denial is gone. Mortality is here. I can’t keep walking around it like the elephant in the living room. It’s bigger. More unknown. Surprising. Maybe evil. Everyone who has died in my life seemed magically gone. I insulated myself from their pain or I rode or floated on top of it. I can’t do that any more. I’ve never really felt grief and it scares me.

I want to feel up to facing whatever is and face it dead-on, face to face. I don’t want to lose my highs and lows and yet I want to stay in a positive  place. Have I confused something here? Am I trying to give myself a spiritual bypass? Have Bart and I colluded in shutting out my feelings? We don’t like anger. He doesn’t like mine. I don’t like his. Have we overdone it? I want to fully live the human experience. Feelings are part of it. The only way is through – not around. I feel so much better.”

My Husband Needs Me to Trust Him

Trust is a huge factor in any relationship and is probably one of the most important things a man needs out of a relationship. That’s what John Gray was teaching when we worked for him and that’s still true. On page 135 of Men Are from Mars, in the second paragraph John says,

“She Needs Caring and He Needs Trust: …When a woman’s attitude is open and receptive toward a man he feels trusted. To trust a man is to believe that he is doing his best and that he wants the best for his partner….”

Men grow up wanting and, in fact, needing to be trusted and counted on in their relationships. And if they can or cannot  will make the difference to a woman. A woman can be told over and over again that she can trust you but those are just words. It takes action to prove it and the best way for a man to help build the trust with a woman he is in a relationship with is to consistently follow through on what he says with his actions.

A woman that hears a man say he is going to do things and then actually see him follow up on what he has said and do it will find it much easier to build a trusting relationship than with a man who continuously says he is going to do things but doesn’t stand by his word and do them.

So how does this occur in our relationship? Well, I think we’ve refined this a bit. Life is busy for most of us these days and some of us are a bit forgetful so the Martian might promise to fix something around the house and might need to be reminded. But we have 25 years together and I can tell you that he is the most trustworthy man I have ever met. He always supports me and what I want. We committed to each other at our wedding in front of 100 loving friends and family that we would support each other in any of the ways we want to grow. On this point he is 100% trustworthy. I need my feelings and my sexuality treated with kid gloves. I was emotionally and sexually abused in my past. He passes with totally flying colors. We committed long ago to tell each other the emotional truth and he is unfailing in doing that and doing it lovingly and gently.

Does he always remember to change a light bulb exactly on time? Or fix something that needs fixing? Not always. Sometimes I remind him (trying to remember to “ask as if for the first time” – another Mars/Venus-ism) but on the really important stuff, he is a star Martian.

Life Lessons in the Movies

You never know where life lessons will appear to you. A few months ago one very important one appeared to me in a very special documentary called “The Long Green Line”. The movie was given to me by its director and producer, Matthew Arnold (who also happens to be my daughter’s boyfriend). I was slightly nervous about watching it because I almost have to like it, don’t I? It is my daughter’s boyfriend after all. Well, no need to be nervous. It is fabulous!

The movie is about Joe Newton, a high school cross country coach for over 50 years in the suburb of Chicago where Matthew grew up and his parents still reside. Joe is a somewhat irascible man in his late 70’s who has coached his cross country teams to 26 wins! You might ask, “Does Elmhurst have something special in the water that produces such amazing male teenagers who can run so mightily?” No. Although not knowing anything much about Elmhurst, it could be so. But I don’t think that’s it at all. What’s different about Joe Newton is that he loves the boys to success. That’s right it is LOVE that makes the difference.

His philosophy is to get as many 9th grade boys as possible involved in the team. He learns all of their names. Shakes hands with each one at the end of each encounter. That’s 200 or so kids!

The year that Matthew chose to film the team was a year like any other in Elmhurst high school’s cross country arena. He couldn’t have know how many top running boys would be lost to the team that year and under what unusual circumstances.

But it was an extraordinary year just as this is an extraordinary film. It teaches by example the most basic of spiritual principles – that love is the most important experience . If you truly love someone, you see who they are. You do not have to make them over in your image or an image you want them to be.

And that’s what Joe Newton’s success is all about.

If you are looking for a different, inspirational gift to give or a way to help your teen stay on a healthy track of life, visit the site and know it is definitely a gift that will keep on giving.

There are many reasons that having a life coach is a beneficial thing. It brings an objective voice to your life that has (hopefully – see NOAGNDA ) no other agenda to follow other than to help you find and achieve what you want in your life.

Friends and family can be great support but they don’t always agree with what you actually want and may feel that they know what would be best for you and make you happy. A coach (again, hopefully) will never do this.

1. A life coach can help you pull your life out of a rut that you may be stuck in. You may find yourself bored and not enjoying your life or your work anymore. A life coach can help you figure out why and how to fix it.
2. Another way a life coach can help you is by helping to organize your goals so that you can actually get what you want and not just dream about it. Many people seem to have lost their vision in life and feel like they have no purpose.
3. Life coaching can help pull your purpose back out of you and get you back on track.
4. Many people turn to a life coach during big transitions in their life such as retirement, job change or divorce. Coaches often have or create in the moment tools to help you keep your coaching-acquired skills as you leave your coaching experience and continue on with your life.
5. People looking for more passion or value in their life may turn to a coach to help explore why these things are missing in your life.
6. Another reason someone may turn to a life coach is if they have been engaging in destructive behaviors , a coach may be able to help them figure out why and make some changes.

Whatever your reasons might be. Try it. See how it can work for you.