Why you should consider using a life coach.

I know, life coaching has a bit of an image problem. When I try to explain it to some people they say things like '.....but what do you DO?' They may think it all sounds a bit 'airy fairy' or 'New Age' or even (gasp) Ame-ri-can! After all, us Brits are so hard-nosed and down-to-earth right? Meat and potatoes, none of that fancy stuff for us. The stoicism that got us great! And I have to say; all that is true. There is a stoicism in the UK and it has served us well in past times. So, is that it? Should we all just grit our teeth and knuckle down with that Bulldog Spirit? Just get the job done eh Monty? Perhaps, and as a coach I would agree that there are times when this approach is extremely effective because we don't want to all be whimpering wrecks running for help at the first sign of trouble.

But the reality; the reality is that we are complex beings full of feelings and we live in a world that can also be overwhelmingly hard to navigate. True, you might not hire a life coach if you're living on the breadline or struggling to feed your kids, but you might. It's no accident that life coaching has emerged at this time in human history, in western culture. People are looking for more than just life-in-survival-mode. Not surprisingly they are interested in more abstract and elusive goals such as fulfillment, happiness and achievement.

For the last few thousand years, and particularly in the last few hundred, we have lived with the urgent need to provide, for families and for ourselves. Principally this has come to be expected through an exchange of work for money. This was an exchange that worked quite well for a long time. Employees were grateful to have the security to bring up families and feel certain about the future. But things are changing. Actually they have already changed. In reality people are no longer satisfied with the deal of the industrial age under which the majority still labour. Organisations may thrive, individuals get worn out. They know they are missing out on something, and they're right.
The media works (inadvertently) in the service of companies, corporations and governments by instilling fear through relentlessly sensationalised reporting which engenders a non-stop sense of crisis so that employees are sent scurrying back to the grindstone with their heads down.

But now so many people are beginning to ask awkward questions, such as: Am I happy? Can I be happy and what will it take?
Artificial Intelligence and other technological phenomena will no doubt transform our society beyond recognition in the next decade, probably in ways that we don't even know yet. But one thing is for certain: people will have more options and more leisure time than ever before and life coaches, counsellors and psychologists will be required to help them adapt and manage the onslaught of change.

We need a way to navigate through all of this. You are not a machine. You ARE a complex, feeling individual and somewhere, somehow there is fulfillment waiting for you. You do not have to passively accept things the way they are. But as long as you are scurrying, as long as you buy into the scary looking version of the world and put your aspirations on hold, you are unlikely to be able to clear a space to really get to know who you are and why you are here, let alone do something about it.

Life coaching is a service that is perfectly suited to the existential dilemmas that are already looming for post-industrial societies.It is probably THE best and most effective way to get focused and set a course that YOU have chosen rather than feeling it has been thrust upon you.  So what is it that you want to do? What will it take to get you to the place of feeling ownership of your daily activities, tuning into your purpose with a clear understanding of what's important?

Life coaching CAN be about exploring feelings, about discovering who you are and what you want. It CAN be about setting definite goals for higher achievement, success and recognition. Life coaches are interested, for the most part in supporting you in getting where you want to go, as long as it aligns with your values. Life coaching is as multi-faceted and many-layered as individuals and what happens in life coaching will depend uniquely on the person that you are.

Showing Up

Shakespeare's observation that 'all the world's a stage' is a cliche that has never been more true, and more confusing than nowadays where we have the ability to create and animate a multiplicity of identities via electronic media, as well as social circles in which we move. Through such channels we can show up in a variety of ways, and furthermore we can objectify our own identity in ever increasing aspects, having it reflected back to us whenever we access our various accounts.
Generally speaking, we want to create a positive image through such identities, one that encourages people to 'follow' us or gets us the kind of attention that could potentially turn into profit or at least, a favourable social profile.
     But what about when we actually show up in person? Because when this happens, there's no getting away from the reality of who we are in the world. Of course we can fool some of the people some of the time, and so on, but not for too long, especially when those people are more experienced, more knowledgeable and more perceptive than we are. By definition of course, if you want to develop your career, you'll need to impress exactly these sort of people, and these sort of people will most certainly notice how you show up, when you show up.

 Of course, how you show up depends on who you are showing up for, what the circumstances are and so on. How you show up on your first day of work at a company will almost certainly be quite different from your 1000th day at the same company. How you show up when you meet your friends for a few drinks will obviously be different from how you show up at a job interview. But not too different. There will be some considerable overlap otherwise we're looking at authenticity issues here!

An actor tries to convince an audience that they are actually the person in the role they are playing and through the magic of our brains being able to 'suspend disbelief' we are able to buy into that illusion, provided the acting itself is sufficiently convincing and not unnatural or inconsistent.The same can be said in real life, except in real life we have to actually become the part we are playing, in varying degrees for varying lengths of time.

So the question is: how DO you show up? Yes YOU! Or, to put it another way:
Do you show up as a possibility?

Are you showing up as someone that gets things done, that facilitates, that contributes, strengthens, focuses and engages? Or do you show up as someone that creates a burden, gets in the way, creates discord, distracts, slows things down, is needy, calculating or egocentric?

Of course we all think we know how we are being, but unfortunately it is not so simple, not by a long shot. When it comes to engagement and communication, there are tremendous blind spots that may be glaringly obvious to others. One way to get feedback of course is to look at the results you are getting. Do people respond to you positively?Or do you consistently get reactions that you didn't expect, or which seem 'unfair' to you? If the latter is the case, it may be that the way you are showing up and the way you see yourself are not in alignment. Our biggest problem is the ego. We may convince ourselves that we are just right for the part, but unlike actors on the stage, few of us have a director or producer to guide and coach us as we play each scene (experienced actors may not need, or think they need such guidance).

Another way to know more about how you show up is to ask for feedback, or get training, coaching or mentoring. If we can deal with the sometimes painful truth that constitutes the deficit between how we see ourselves and how the world sees us, then we are well on our way to getting places we want to go.

For a free training video on 'Showing Up' visit my You Tube channel at the following link
Showing Up

The Prosperity Mindset

    An American author and speaker by the name of Randy Gage is a specialist on the subject of prosperity and the prosperity mindset. His compelling claim is that prosperity is a state of mind that goes beyond how you see issues relating to wealth and money. In his definition, prosperity is a lifestyle and concerns your health and diet, exercise, friends and associates, beliefs, activities, habits etc etc.

   We all want to prosper, but according to Randy Gage, most of us have thought patterns, or 'mind-viruses' that prevent or obstruct us from doing so. These can manifest in many different ways. For example, there's the 'victim mentality' where we see ourselves as forlorn but heroic individuals struggling against the big corporation, our employer, the politicians etc. Another damaging idea that many people hold is 'the entitlement mentality' where we affirm our right to a free education, healthcare, public services etc without necessarily giving back very much to society. Another idea that is perhaps more controversial is the question of who gets to benefit from our ability to add value and solve problems in society. Randy Gage's libertarian point of view is that we are entitled to receive in proportion to the value we create in society, an idea which is antithetical, for example to socialism where the spoils of enterprise and innovation are forcibly redistributed.

Have you ever felt resentment towards that big, pinstripe suited guy gliding past behind the wheel of his Rolls Royce while you stand at the curb waiting to cross the road in the rain? If the answer is 'Yes' even for a split second, then you are infected with limiting and anti-prosperity memes, or thought patterns. You might not go so far as to run your key down the side of his vehicle when you see it parked, but you are only two or three steps removed from this point of view. You might catch yourself thinking, for example something cynical that suggests the rich guy must have done something dishonest to get where he is today.Behind such thoughts lurk anti-prosperity patterns that can sabotage your ability to create prosperity in your life.

A person's ability to be wealthy, according to the prosperity mindset, depends not on their background, education, work ethic or ability to save but on their values and relationship with principles of prosperity. Thus, a person born into a rich family will not remain so if they acquire anti-prosperity patterns as they grow up. The fact that most children of wealthy people remain wealthy is due to their inheritance of a prosperity mindset and growing up in a an environment where prosperity is a fact of life. For these people, there is often no need to adjust their patterns. But for most of us, there is work to be done in analyzing truthfully and courageously our REAL relationship with prosperity, asking where our ideas came from and whether or not they support us in having a shot of living happy and complete lives.

If you're interested in finding our more about the prosperity mindset, a recommended book is Randy Gage's "Why You're Poor Sick Dumb and Broke and How to get Healthy, Wealthy and Wise."

Goal Setting- Beware!

If you plug into the personal and professional development world, as I have done for many years, you will immediately encounter the notion that setting goals is good. Many trusted professional advisers will actually tell you that if you do not set goals you will never arrive or achieve the things you 'want' in life.

Personally I have never been a goal setter by instinct. Yes I always had things that I 'wanted' but in terms of mapping out a path for achieving them, that was something I never felt motivated to do. However, a couple of years ago I reached a point where I started to listen to the authors and top coaches who insist that setting goals is the right path to travel if we ever want to be satisfied.
So I gave it a try. I even wrote down in detail the goals that I thought I wanted to achieve and how I would achieve them. 30 day goals, 90 day goals, 6 month goals et cetera.I was determined. This time I would work towards my goals, achieve them and get the things I 'wanted'.

But an interesting thing happened. Life happened. I found that some of the ways I had set to achieve my goals did not suit me. They felt 'wrong' and were simply not very interesting for me to be involved in.I found it exhausting and stressful to even think about some of them. Life was already busy, but these goals involved taking massive added action that I had neither the energy nor enthusiasm to go through with. Furthermore, when I went back to review my goals after a few weeks, I wasn't even sure that these were the things I really wanted!

Another thing that occurred to me was this: supposing I carry out all these actions over 6 months and then whatever number of years and I DON'T reach the goals that I'm not totally sure I want anyway? I would have wasted years of time and energy doing stuff that wasn't fun or particularly creative. Or, supposing I carried out all the actions over several years and I DID reach these goals and then found that I didn't really want them after all? Or, supposing I carried out my plans and became bored with the predictability of it all, ignoring the random stuff that comes up in life so that I can focus on these goals?

Yes I understand that for some people, goal-setting does appear to work. I understand that some people swear by it and seem to use it quite effectively. But to me, it seems like a very constraining way to live.

We all have 'wants' and 'desires'. These are things we say that we want. But how often do we question WHY it is that we want these things? Where do these desires actually come from? More importantly, how do we really know that they will improve our lives and bring us satisfaction? Short answer, we don't. The world is littered with individual examples of people that achieved their goals but were far from happy or satisfied. They got the stuff that almost everyone on the planet would say that they want, but it didn't really do them any good in the long run.

More money, a beautiful body, a new relationship,fame, success, a 'better' job, a new car, whatever. These type of things are VERY seductive from the outside but setting our goals on such 'outer world' items at the expense of our inner world, can lead to misery rather than happiness.

I am not saying here that setting goals is bad or wrong. I am saying BE CAREFUL. Where are those things that we so desperately seem to want coming from? What's behind all of it? Maybe these are questions that we could spend our time investigating, and maybe the answers would transform the way we see our whole lives, especially the things we say we 'want'.