Life Coaching and Beyond

I heard the term professional life coach about 12 years ago. I didn’t think then “Oh, that’s what I am”. It was a regular day at the Mars Venus Institute where my husband and I ran this workshop training company owned by John Gray, when we got a call from Laura Whitworth from the Coaches Training Institute .  She wanted to speak to John Gray about adding relationship training to their curriculum.

Subsequently I heard “life coach ” from a friend who had recently begun working with a spiritual life coach. I was verbally ruminating about what I was going to do next in my life when she said, “You should become a life coach. It’s what you do anyway!” That is when life coaching and beyond all started.

What I Talk to My Coach About

I like to talk to a life coach when I’m stuck – when I can’t get on my magic carpet and look at my life from a larger perspective – when I am finding my mind and my behavior not in line with how I want my life to go.

Example : I had some big issues going on in the lives of my son and grandson. Important biggies. Now I know that attention on the picky little negative details is not how to create the positive outcomes that I want. But sometimes my mind gets stuck and keeps going there just like my tongue goes to where a tooth is missing. So, I want my life coach to remind me what happens when I do that. In other words, my life coach helps me reframe my situation to a more positive, life-affirming and empowered viewpoint. So I can go from life coaching and beyond.

Example : sometimes current situations trigger childhood unresolved issues particularly when I am working with someone who is resolving parental issues. Any perceived rejection or abandonment on their part can easily send me into a tizzy. Then I want help and assignments to help me get back to center.

“It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.”
Buddha

Discipline is a concept which comes from your mind — a thinking form of structure, imposed from the outside when your will is fragile – when your generator is idling or low, rather than going strong. Sometimes, you need a bit of discipline or structure when your will is fragile — however your inner will ought not to be confused with its catalyst or helper — discipline. Will is not discipline. Will is inner. Discipline is outer. Here’s an example: I am on a health program that tests my nutritional needs and supplement needs and then tells me what foods are best for me to eat and what vitamins and minerals are best for me to take. Sometimes my will is so strong. It is so easy to follow my program. And sometimes I find I have to go to my mind or intellect which knows this program the best thing for me and impose discipline on myself. This is not how I like to do it. It’s hard and makes me want to rebel – almost as if some mean parent is making me do something. It’s as if the self-imposed discipline is a loving parent that will put the tired child to bed even though the child thinks it would rather stay up and watch TV.

If will is your inner source, it comes from a Power greater than yourself. (Uh oh. Is she talking about God?) Well, it can be God or it can just be all those people for whom this works. Alternatively, it can also be a belief in higher principles. Therefore, without that power – Great Creator, God, Universe, Good, Group consciousness, etc., we do not have contact with the will. You may have to use some outer discipline, until the inner inspiration takes over.

WILL = INNER = SOURCE
DISCIPLINE = OUTER = MIND

A fully functioning will is the source of true willpower.

UNSATISFIED NEEDS OFTEN AFFECT WILLINGNESS. FOR THAT REASON, IT IS THE PERFECT TIME TO TAKE STOCK OF YOUR NEEDS.

**Excerpt from You University: Coaching Program to Learn to Live Your Real Self © by Maia Berens

Rules For Being Human

These rules are consistent to everyone. It doesn’t matter where you are or where you are from these rules apply to your life. If you can embrace them, your self growth will truly show itself.

1.  You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period this time around.

2.  You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time, informal school called Life. Each day in this school, you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think them stupid and irrelevant.

3.  There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error, experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately “works.”

4.  A lesson is repeated until learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.

5.  Learning lessons does not end. There is no part of Life that does not contain lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.

6.  “There” is no better than “here.” When your “there” has become a  “here,” you will simply obtain another “there” that will again look better than “here.”

7.  Others are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something that you love or hate about yourself.

8.  What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.

9.  Your answers lie inside of you. The answer to Life’s questions lie inside of you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.

10.  This will often be forgotten, only to be remembered again.

From the book If Life is a Game, These are the Rules by Cherie Carter-Scott

Inner Child Healing

It started for me as a child. My mother wanted me to be perfect and I bought into it totally. I imagine that the choice was made during some period when I was out of a body and just an energy – a soul – and decided that a good part of my path in this life would be to always try to be perfect. I often fall very short. Many years ago I started working on my inner child healing and realized at age 66 that perfection is a mental box. It keeps creativity from entering.

Let’s look at an example. Let’s say I want perfect grooming. I try to figure out how to have my hair look perfect. I try to figure out how my nails should look to be considered perfect. I spend lots of effort figuring out how to dress, moisturize, deodorize and criticize myself into perfection. Does it work? Can I ever truly be perfect? Of course not! The more I try to be perfect the more I cut myself off from my inner child healing and know my true self.  It is not worth severing that connection with myself to fit into someone’s fashion box.

Let’s look at another example. Let’s say I want the perfect career but I don’t know who I am or what my gifts really are. I must start with my inner child healing, spending time on my own knowing.  Otherwise I will have cut myself off from that inner knowing by spending so much time in my thinking-ego-mind that I’m even confused about what others think is the perfect career.

You are the only expert on you what you need. How do you take those “cut off” parts of yourself back? You keep learning, being open to hearing from truly loving support and you keep knowing that you are intrinsically, infinitely creative by virtue of being a part of the magnificent Whole. You are perfectly you.

Proud of My Clients

That’s how I feel about Brenda’s accomplishments. She’s 59 and has always worked for someone else.  Friday was her last day of work in N. Carolina and Tuesday she got on a plane and moved to California where she will begin her own life coaching practice. Of course, she’s also going through all the feelings of the huge change in her life, but courageously moving into her new tomorrow.

This is another way I know the coaching relationship is working. She’s moving forward and I am kvelling!

What a great session we had today – which is the usual for us. Now that you have a coaching blog, I can express the enthusiasm and clarity I feel at the end of our session.  In the past I sometimes did this by email.

When I was commenting to you how stagnated I feel because I “should” be more focused on creating my website, you made me aware of “should”.  Thanks.  I will be working on the assignment you proposed and look forward to next week’s time together.  My assignment was to live with the inquiry of “What if I jumped right to going after being a life coach with no steps in between?” I’ll let that percolate for the week and see where it goes in me.

World’s Happiest Places

A new report reveals where people feel most positive about their lives.

By Lauren Sherman

See story here

When I see a headline like the one above, I have to check it out. After all, in some ways that’s what I’m about; the pursuit of happiness – inner happiness. What I’ve learned is that that pursuit attracts the very best into my life. I’m guessing the Founding Fathers must have know something about that or the words would not be “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. So why am I reading that it’s not in this country at all where people feel the happiest. It’s Denmark, Finland and Netherlands as #1, #2 and #3. We didn’t even make the top 10.

I know you want to say “it’s the economy” but read the article and see it’s not about money.

It is family, social and community networks that bring joy to one’s life, the article states. And it’s “work-life balance” and having a job that bring up the rear.

So it is a little bit about the economy but go back to “the pursuit of happiness”. Did the job you lost appear as a pursuit of happiness to you? Are your family, social and community networks tuned up and bringing joy to your life?

So if you want your life to feel happy and where you are to feel happy, start here:

• Create joy in your family.
• Create joy with your friends.
• Create joy in your community
• Pursue TRUE happiness and if you don’t know what that is, get some help to find out.