I woke up Saturday morning a little bummed. I had noticed that in recent weeks I had felt out of sorts. It wasn’t a bad mood. It was more of a sense of being perpetually “jammed.” So I am a coach. I listen to the plight of others, attempting to foster in my clients new perspectives which allow them to overcome their difficulties. Maybe I could apply a little coaching to myself. The practice that I often use in assisting clients to gain a new or broader perspective is called “self observation.” It consists of monitoring your behaviors, thoughts, and emotions to see exactly what gives rise to sense of being “stuck.” Keep Reading »
Posts Tagged ‘Exercises’
Coach, Observe Thyself!
What’s Your Core Message?
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 »
Making Amends Exercise
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 »
Unconditioned Awareness
I recently mentioned here my book group telephone conversation with Peter Fenner, author of Radiant Mind – Awakening Unconditioned Awareness. Peter spoke to us from Kathmandu, Nepal. For those who have not studied Eastern mystical traditions, the book is not all that user-friendly. He has drawn upon various Hindu and Buddhist schools in presenting his teaching of “non-dualism.” Peter describes, ”The primary intention of nondual teaching is to introduce people to the unconditioned dimension of their existence, and then to deepen and stabilize the experience.” My best translation of the nondual experience is living in a world without your narrative. Your conditioned reactions, judgments and beliefs, and habitual perceptions are set aside. You reside in present moment stillness, which Peter calls unconditioned awareness. Keep Reading »
Wordle and the Karate Kid
Yesterday, I was working with a coaching client who is both a seasoned lawyer and an accomplished graphic artist. I had asked him to keep a daily journal of observations concerning what had inspired him during the course of his day. Jeff is well into his career but feels a bit “at sea” over the course of his life and professional direction. I wanted to see if Jeff could reveal to himself what fired him up, not by thinking about it as a “big picture” issue, but rather by seeing what emerged from a composite of all the little events that occurred to him in the course of the day. I asked that he not self-edit his observations. I urged him to “let the words flow.” And so he did, with a freedom and openness that was readily apparent to me. But Jeff still couldn’t see what I saw coming from his writing. He was perplexed. He didn’t comprehend the beliefs and judgments that were shaping his world view. Then, I had an “Aha!” moment. Keep Reading »
Trust Types
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.
Letter to a Friend
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.
Exercise – How Do I Trust?
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
Building Support Exercise
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.
Eating Meditation
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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