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Archive for the ‘Exercises’ Category
Posted on Tuesday, September 20th, 2011
Tags: Appreciation, Awareness, Curiosity, Discovery, Exercises, Listening, Meditation, Perception, Purpose, Relationship, Spaciousness
Categories: Awareness, Coaching, Curiosity, Discovery, Exercises, Listening, Meditation, Perception, Purpose, Spaciousness
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 In connection with my pursuit of a speaking career, I engaged the services of Juanell Teague, who works with speakers to develop their content and market position in the speaking industry. Juanell is a delightful lady, who lives in a Dallas suburb, along a street populated by more diverse religious establishments than I ever have witnessed elsewhere in my travels. She is a very proper and Christian lady. And she has been around the speaking industry for many years, going back to the days of promoting events for Zig Ziglar, an early and renowned motivational speaker. Juanell transmitted to me a workbook designed to elicit my background, interests, prior speaking experience, my personal views, values and perspectives. We had several preparatory telephone conversations, designed to build rapport and mutual understanding, before I traveled to Dallas for a 2- day intensive session on developing my core message and, what is known in the speaking industry, as a “one sheet”- designed to drive meeting planners, corporate leaders and industry association big-wigs to your door for speaking engagements.
After completing the preparatory material, I flew to Dallas in early June for my 2 day, one on one session. For Juanell, speaking is not a career, it is a manifestation of your passion. If you can find that passion, embody it in content that solves someone’s real problem, deliver that content authentically, you will become successful, engaged and empowered speaker. Our work for those 2 days was to identify that passion, uniquely “brand” it and create a “one sheet” that effectively communicated the promise of the unique content that I had to offer. Keep Reading »
Posted on Tuesday, September 13th, 2011
Categories: Balance, Body/Mind, Coaching, Continuous Partial Attention, Exercises, Happiness, Love, Poetry, Spaciousness, Uncategorized
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 The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlein recently was recommended to me by a friend as we discussed, over our lunch at Perry’s, the long term ramifications of having been raised entirely in the “digital age.” Bauerlein is an English professor at Emory University. If the title doesn’t make it altogether clear what Bauerlein believes, the subtitle clears up any ambiguity – How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30). I purchased the book in an MP3 format, as my work recently has had me in my car 5 to 7 hours per week. At 11.5 hours, I would complete the book in a little over a week. I started it out last Friday, endured the first chapters, then something amazing happened – I ejected the disc! I actually stopped “reading” a book. That almost never happens with me. Sometimes I put a book down to begin another (I often read as many as 5 books concurrently), then pick it back up a few weeks later. But with this one, I had the distinct sense that I was finished with it! Keep Reading »
Posted on Tuesday, June 21st, 2011
Tags: Awareness, Change, Discovery, Exercises, Healing, Perception, Purpose, Relationship, Transition
Categories: Awareness, Change, Curiosity, Discovery, Exercises, Perception, Purpose, Relationship, Transition
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 Atonement is a process of making amends for a past transgression in which your inappropriate behavior caused harm to another. Perhaps you are the lucky one and you have made amends for all of your life transgressions. If so, congratulations! For all the rest, let’s take a moment to inquire into just one such transgression. Because this exercise requires a certain degree of fortitude, you probably shouldn’t choose your most difficult one. You can work your way up to it later, when you understand the benefit of this inquiry. Keep Reading »
 In Building Trust, Solomon & Flores distinguish four types of trust, three of which I will briefly summarize here – basic trust, simple trust, and blind trust.
Basic trust is established in early childhood. It is “basic” by virtue of its foundational nature arising from your earliest experiences. It may be part inherited and part innate. As you grow, your sense of basic trust is enhanced or undermined by your subsequent experiences. It establishes a basis for your entire personality and your orientation toward the world. It concerns not only your physical security, but your security in your own being and your place in the world. Examples of basic trust might be that you rely upon people within your faith community or “bad” things don’t happen to “good” people. Although it originates in the family setting, once you go beyond that setting, it is a trust that must be learned. According to Solomon & Flores, basic trust is relatively open ended and rather indiscriminate. It is fundamentally a trust that bad things will not happen. Without such basic trust, life would be terrifying.
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Posted on Thursday, December 30th, 2010
Tags: Appreciation, Exercises, Happiness, Love, Relationship, Trust
Categories: Discovery, Exercises, Happiness, Love, Relationship
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 The following letter was written by Fra Giovanni Giocondo (1435 -1515) to his friend, Countess Allagia Aldobrandeschi, in December, 1513. Born in Venice, Giocondo became a Renaissance pioneer – accomplished as an architect, engineer, antiquary, archaeologist, classical scholar, and Franciscan friar. He designed a drainage system for the Venice lagoons. He built the fortifications of Treviso, and is universally credited with the design of the Palazzo del Consiglio (1476) at Verona, an elegant, arcaded monument of the early Renaissance. In 1496, he accompanied Charles VIII to France as court architect. If you have ever travelled to Paris and walked across the beautiful bridges of Pont Notre-Dame or the Petit Pont – you have experienced his design work.
Consider the trust contained within this intimate communication.
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 Before getting into a detailed conversation about trust, let’s try the following exercise:
Objective:
To become aware of how much trust is a part of your life
To understand how you define trust for yourself
To identify the “triggers” that lead to trust or distrust in your life
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 One coaching client came to me in crisis. His career was at risk due to a downturn in the economy. He recently had divorced and, as a consequence, lost a relationship with one of his adult children. He had put on thirty unwanted pounds and his financial circumstances were in disarray, arising from prior bad investment decisions. These accumulated circumstances had him effectively “living under a rock.” He worked long hours without accomplishing much. He sequestered himself in his apartment, cutting off old friends and creating little opportunity for making new ones. He was convinced that he was so undesirable, that there was little to be gained from social interaction.
As part of his coaching, we developed the following practice to break up his pattern of isolation.
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 I had promised you a guided eating meditation. I think that it is only fitting that I give it to you now as I am entering into the second week of a very spartan diet, designed as a liver cleanse, which also, hopefully, will reduce my “middle aged middle.” The first two weeks of the diet consists of one meal a day, consisting almost entirely of protein and three (3) home concocted protein drinks. That is all. No sugars, no alcohol, no caffeine. It is designed to give my hard working liver a much needed rest and allow it to process out unneeded fats which tend to accumulate in middle age. I have dropped about seven pounds in six days. I know that won’t go on for six weeks, but I enjoy getting off to that kind of start.
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Posted on Tuesday, September 21st, 2010
Tags: Awareness, Curiosity, Exercises, Meditation
Categories: Awareness, Change, Curiosity, Discovery, Exercises, Meditation
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 My wife, Nancy, first met Wendy Palmer at Rancho La Puerta, an ecoresort in Northern Mexico. Wendy was introducing her Conscience Embodiment program to RLP guests, a program that she developed combing principles of aikido and meditation. Nancy put her name on Wendy’s mailing list and a few month’s later we found ourselves at the Aikido of Tamalpias Dojo in Mill Valley for a weekend program.
Wendy is an engaging teacher. Her diminutive height is so thoroughly overcome by the power emanating from her being that your immediate reaction is one of respect and awe. She is a compelling instructor and her program is exceptionally revealing. For more on Conscience Embodiment, I refer you to Wendy’s book, in its third edition, The Intuitive Body – Discovering the Wisdom of Conscience Embodiment and Aikido.
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 Retrieve your writing from the Alignment with Purpose exercise we just did in which you noted where you are out of alignment in various domains of your life. Again, find a quiet space to do some writing. For each of the domains, review what you have written, then write for ten minutes on what you want to do to correct the misalignment. Do you already know? If so, for how long have you known? If you don’t know or are confused about the answer, what resources would help you? What effort, if any, have you previously made to correct this misalignment? Did it help? If not, do you know why it didn’t work?
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In connection with my pursuit of a speaking career, I engaged the services of Juanell Teague, who works with speakers to develop their content and market position in the speaking industry. Juanell is a delightful lady, who lives in a Dallas suburb, along a street populated by more diverse religious establishments than I ever have witnessed elsewhere in my travels. She is a very proper and Christian lady. And she has been around the speaking industry for many years, going back to the days of promoting events for Zig Ziglar, an early and renowned motivational speaker. Juanell transmitted to me a workbook designed to elicit my background, interests, prior speaking experience, my personal views, values and perspectives. We had several preparatory telephone conversations, designed to build rapport and mutual understanding, before I traveled to Dallas for a 2- day intensive session on developing my core message and, what is known in the speaking industry, as a “one sheet”- designed to drive meeting planners, corporate leaders and industry association big-wigs to your door for speaking engagements.
