One of the roles of a coach is in being a sounding board during brainstorming, where a client considers all the options available to them and begins to formulate an action plan. During a coaching session, the client often discovers incredible ideas, thoughts and possibilities that they hadn’t considered before.

It is important to state that the role of the coach in this environment is simply to listen, make notes if required and ask an occasional question that may help the process move forward. The difference between this and an environment such as at work, is that there is only one opinion in the equation and the client can freely explore the limits of their thoughts and imagination without interference.

Once the brainstorming process is completed, the next stage is to prioritise and select things to work on. The final stage for this post, is called chunking. This is simply breaking everything down into chunks or elements that can be put into an order to form an action plan.

For some people this is commonplace in their work, but most have never considered the value this can have in other areas of their lives. I’m always struck by the variety of styles that people will adopt in this process: Some are meticulous in their detail, some draw elaborate diagrams or mind-maps, while others are content to have 5 or 6 bits of paper with some words written on them. What I’ve come to realise is that each of us has the idea that ours is the best way… In fact we are all right.

The best way for us is the way that we say it is - something worth remembering the next time you feel inclined to offer advice.

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Technorati Tags: Action Plan, Coaching, Goals, organise, Plan

Yesterday I had the fortune to spend some time with my daughter at a play barn. While we were there I noticed a child who was around a year old and she was trying to take turns on one of the toys. Her mother immediately leapt over to her and shouted “no, be nice” and gave her a light slap on the wrist. The child didn’t cease her activity and the mother picked her up and whisked her off to one of the seats and then repeated her shouting and gave the child three further slaps on the wrist, none of which appeared to hurt the child.

Now, I’m not often judgmental and luckily this wasn’t one of the times where I was, although I had to stop myself from calling her a bully! However I was able to ask myself the question “what this child is learning from this experience?” It struck me that probably the most important thing she is learning is that it is OK to hit other people if they are being naughty. Clearly I am not saying that it is OK to hit other people, but what other lesson can she possibly have learned from this? If your carer shouts, hits or gives any abuse of verbal or physical nature, then this will be the way the world works for you and you will teach it to your children whether you like it or not.

I had visions of this child at her school in a few years time, perhaps one of her friends annoys her in some way and she immediately gives the child a slap or hits them because she has learned from her carers that that is what you do when someone is naughty. Obviously the child has much less control over the strength of her strike than the mother did. Now my next question is this:

Who has the responsibility here, further down the line in the child’s life? Is it the carers who have taught the child that it is OK to hit or slap, or is it the child’s responsibility to behave nicely as their parent is so earnestly trying to teach them?

Indeed, how far back do we take this? In some cases it is generations of parents and carers who have offered the children in their care this idea that it is OK to hit or slap… At some point we have to break this cycle, perhaps simply by becoming aware of the ideas it creates in our children and realising that we are not achieving our objective by treating them in this way. Then when we become aware, we can begin to change our behaviours and help our children to find new ways of interacting in such times.

To me, there is no sense in blaming the child, the parent or indeed any of the generations before and if I’d had my time again with this event, my question for the mother is “What is this reaction to your child’s behaviour teaching your child?” I’m not sure it would be a welcome intervention!

I’m still learning as a parent and in many ways I’m grateful for the opportunity to observe these type of things in order to discover for myself what being a parent means to me.

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Technorati Tags: Behaviour, learning, lessons, parenting

I once learned from a colleague a very useful and very powerful idea regarding empowering yourself by choosing the right questions. I’m really not sure where the idea originally came from, however it has been a very useful one for me over the years and I’d love to share it here.

Let me start by asking a question of you… If something that you do not like has happened, what is the first question that pops into your head? For most people, the answer is “Why did that happen?” or “Why does this keep happening to me?”, right before they set about answering the question and going around in circles trying to understand it.

If your goal is self-improvement or to learn from such experiences then this question of “Why?” is very unlikely to provide you with opportunities to learn anything about yourself. The answers are likely to lie in the areas where you have no responsibility, such as other people, objects, or simply the whole concept of “fate” or “destiny”.

My colleague presented me with the word “How” and invited me to question such events by asking things like, “How can I learn from this?” or “How can I create a more positive outcome in the future?”. In these types of questions, your answers are likely to fall into the areas where you have all the responsibility - your thoughts, choices, behaviours and actions. Ok, so it is possible to ask the question “How can they improve?” etc, but this hardly serves to empower you.

So to be truly empowering these “How?” questions need to focus on your role in the event or experience and how you can move forward for now or for next time. This has been quite transformational for me and a great way for me to create myself and shape my experiences in the world.

In coaching, the “How?” questions can really help to move a client forward and create awareness - in this case the questions focus on the client’s thoughts, choices, behaviours and actions.

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Technorati Tags: destiny, empowering, fate, how, why

Choice is a wonderful topic for a personal development and self-improvement blog to consider. It is for me one of the fundamentals for living a fulfilling life. The more options you can perceive, the more opportunity you have to express who you really are.

If every moment is a choice, then we are simply expressing ourselves as we are in each moment. The choices we make define our own definitions - right, wrong; hot, cold; fun, boring; good, bad etc. It is how we express what we feel about the world we are creating.

There are many who believe (myself included) that what we bring or attract to ourselves is ours to choose. In fact it may be that we attract these things in order to express who we truly are through the choices we then make. Our re-actions are our choice… This is often a sticking point!

Our choice of language often betrays us, we say things like, “That makes me angry.” This gives us no ownership or responsibility for our reactions and feelings. A more empowering statement is, “I’m feeling angry”, or even better, “I’m choosing to feel angry about this.” This concept that we are choosing our feeling gives us the opportunity to choose a different feeling or reaction, the first example has no such opportunity.

There are many books, recordings and such that can help us consider these ideas and our understanding of how our choices impact on our lives. Understanding choice in an abundant life is the key to taking charge and moving away from being the victim of your life to becoming the creator of your experience.

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Technorati Tags: Attraction, Choice, Creating, language, reaction, responsibility

My wife and I spent many years (and still work with) a health company called Herbalife. Specializing in weight management, we have made many observations from watching our customers lose and not lose weight.

It would not be appropriate for me to say that these are the factors in losing weight successfully, however I can certainly give comment on our observations.

The major factor seems to be the thoughts of the person losing weight. The successes very often come from the realisations of the reasons for the poor dietary choices that are made. This difference is often most clear in the cases where weight loss is achieved and then successfully maintained.

Discipline is important, but very often is unsuccessful on its own in maintaining the new shape and size. It appears that the person who is willing to take responsibility for their health has more chance of changing their poor choices and habits. In fact, the person that has a clear picture of what body they wish is almost incapable of making a poor choice.

It is then that a harmony can occur between mind and body and only time seperates the person from their desired size and shape.

There is so much information available to us on good dietary choices that the only thing that stands between us and our beautiful healthy body is our excuses. They too are our responsibility and our choice to make.

If you are struggling with your own weight or health, this may feel like a harsh post and I understand it may cause anger. For you, I’d like to leave you with a question:

If you do not take responsibility for the state of your body, who else will?

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Technorati Tags: health, herbalife, mind and body, responsibility, weight, wellbeing