How Can You Challenge Yourself Today?

Change happens in two ways. It can be thrust upon us by external forces such as the requests of friends, family and others, and the unexpected shifts in life situations that demand response.

When this type of change is resisted, it can cause turbulent times in relationships, careers, perception of economic or social stability, and other intense difficulties. We tell ourselves that there's nothing wrong with how we are, or how we've been doing things -- if only others would realize that and cooperate.

Hmmm. Is that really true? Is it an effective position to take?

Change can also be a pro-active, self-selected, self-challenge process. When this type of change is embarked on, we are more likely to engage with it as an adventure, or an experiment. Our emotional defense mechanisms aren't triggered because we actually can have fun and gain satisfaction from the achievements that self-determined change brings.

Being a bit of a control freak, I prefer the latter. What about you?

How can you challenge yourself today? Here are a few ideas.

1. Emotional challenge -- identify a loss (of person, job, dream, etc) you haven't grieved, and admit how that loss changed you, for better or worse. Then consider how you grew from the experience of this loss.

2. Habit challenge -- select a personal habit you know you need to change, and do one small thing differently today. Make it a game, see how unusual or new or out of character you can be with your one small difference.

3. Interpersonal challenge -- decide to do something impromptu that will bring a smile to a neighbor or stranger. Give an apology, or make an unexpected phone call, or leave a treat for someone who does something usually unacknowledged for you.

Empowering Fearlessness in Turbulent Times

What if you could be 10 times bolder in the face of fear? How could your life be better right now if worry could be reduced significantly? Where would you act courageously if you could trust that all will be fine in the long run?

Coaches ask bold questions, designed to help clients keep their focus glued on an achievable vision of an ideal future -- questions like these. All of us have our growing edges, that line we're afraid to cross because the unknowns on the other side are too big. Many of us reinforce our fear and stagnation by telling ourselves catastrophe stories of imagined awful outcomes.

What if we took a different approach instead, one that is more empowering? One that looks fear in the eye.

Think about this:

• Successful entrepreneurs feel the fear of failure all the time, they just don't let it stop them.
• High achievers prioritize the potential gains of taking calculated risks over the known comforts of feeling safe.
• Worry can be turned into supportive structures and practical action steps if we treat it as "just information."
• Trust is a choice -- it's a decision to remember your own resilience and see an abundance possibilities.

What do you need to be more bold about? What's the first step you'll take in that direction?

What information is your worry giving you today? What productive choices can you make based on that information?

Will you decide to trust yourself, and your knowledge and abilities? What empowering one sentence can you believe about your ability to survive, no matter what?

There ya go -- coaching by blog! LOL

Challenging Clients

A coach's job is to challenge her clients to perceive with a different mindset, to seek solutions by looking for opportunities to go beyond the norm, and to support and encourage clients to dance on their growing edge of taking the necessary risks that lead to success.

The coaching relationship is all about helping clients see their own possibilities and design the action steps to make those possibilities a reality.

At times we make bold requests or ask powerful questions that can challenge a person's most cherished -- or unconscious -- priorities. While each coach has their own style, and while some do more teaching or mentoring than pure coaching, at the heart of the practice, coaches should vigorously hold the belief that it is how our clients think about what they can ask of themselves that supports and nourishes transformative change.

Our job is to help clients think on a larger scale than they previously have, to expect more from themselves than they usually do, and to believe as much in their ability to succeed as we do.

Swim, Gallop or Fly?

Coaches often wonder about the difference between coaching and counseling. A recent forum post captured my interest and prompted this response.

I take as my role the job of helping clients not just see the light at the end of the tunnel and figure out how to get there. As a coach, my job is to help the client jump the tracks and take to the air -- in other words, to leave altogether the paradigm of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and building the track to reach it.

My job is to help coachees envision a completely new view of themselves and their possibilities.

In other words, (and switching metaphors) a fish never imagines it can gallop because it has no frame of reference for being a horse. As a counselor, my job is to help the fish adjust to the disappointment and sense of loss it may experience if it happens to see a horse and want to be one, to teach effective coping tools for the inner urge to leap out of the fish tank, to tame the post traumatic stress of being nearly stepped on by a horse, to heal the depression or anxiety about the inevitability of being a fish, and to reintegrate its identity as a fish with a sense of belonging to its pod or school of origin.

As a coach my job is to help the fish imagine how horse-ness might work in the fish tank, to help the fish identify what it would need to be more horse-like within the parameters of obvious physical limitations, and to guide the fish in creating the action steps for experimenting with incorporating selected horse traits into the fish's world view and behavior patterns.

In other words, my job as a coach is to help clients think big, act brave, take the next leap, and discover they can not just gallop, but fly.

The Gift of Time

Once a year we get an incredible gift – by the grace of whatever consensus that gives us the return from daylight savings time, we get to re-do an hour of our lives.

Sure, for most of us this occurs in the middle of the night, as clocks are set back at 2 am. And if you’re chronically fatigued like I am, you probably spend this precious hour sleeping. But think of it. What if you could use that hour to undo an argument, take back a harsh word, or remove yourself from a conflict? What if you could push against the obstacle just one more time and this time gain the breakthrough?

What if you used that hour to pause all the fear and worry, and look instead at what you’re grateful for, and at what makes your life content, if not wonderfully happy? What could taking advantage of this gift contribute to you?

Or, an even better question is, how might you use this small bit of extra time to contribute to making someone else’s life better?

Often, it’s not the big efforts that define a life, but the small, daily, unnoticed and unapplauded ones that create who we are on the moment to moment basis. It’s the unconscious, reflex reactions that are the evidence of what we truly value, and we rarely stop long enough to really examine how are beliefs and assumptions are getting put into action.

An hour is enough time to think a new thought, change perspectives, give forgiveness, voice an apology, ask for what you want, or finally own your power. It’s enough time to make a new commitment to yourself, and to specify at least three action steps for accomplishing that.

An hour is enough time to begin to change everything. How will you use your gift of time?

Getting Fit

I bet you thought this entry would be about physical fitness, didn’t you?

Well, sorry to disappoint -- I’m speaking here about getting the right fit between coach and client. And maybe there will be some similarities, if not analogies or metaphors that can be made between the two concepts.

Why is getting fit important? I think there are a number of obvious reasons. For example, without fit:

· Coach can become an obstacle in coachee’s process

· Coachee may struggle with investing in the process

· Coachee may not feel understood or supported

· Coach may be unable to assist in goal attainment

Although it may not be possible to have a perfect fit, just due to the nature of differing cultural and experiential backgrounds, education, or personalities, there may be a few ways to ensure the best possible match, such as:

· Coach can market to an ideal client niche

· Coach can resist temptation to take on everyone

· Coach can claim her own expertise and stick to it

· Client can be clear about her initial goals

· Client can ask for what she needs and wants

· Client can be view herself as a hiring authority

· Coach can be quick to say when there’s not a close enough fit

It’s not a bad thing to refuse a client, or for a client to decline to hire. In fact, I suggest it’s a sign of integrity to know your limits, know what you want and accept only the best chances of getting that.

Here’s how this resembles physical fitness, which is about toning muscles and improving functional endurance.

Getting fit between coaches and clients is a process of exercising the mental, emotional, spiritual muscles of truth telling, empowering relationships, investing in self-commitment, asking for what you want and need, and knowing that it is in everyone's best interest to do so. And that is what improves the functional endurance of the coaching relationship.