Coaches Corner~Thinking

In an earlier blog, I talked about how I tend to take liberties from time to time. The reason I take those liberties is that I give those liberties. I'm extremely friendly. I'm extremely considerate when it comes to my friends or to humanity in general. I want to revisit that situation just a little bit. This time I'm going to focus on self-management.

I'm always talking about mind sets, how your mindset determines that course of your life. I use these blogs to demonstrate that many times and that's what's happening right now. When I got to the destination, which was a 30 minute drive away from my house, my colleague was not there waiting for me. He lives a short distance from where I ended up going so he could have gotten there in five or ten minutes. When I got there, he wasn't there. Knowing that he took the liberty by waiting so long, by waiting until the last minute, several thoughts crossed my mind. I thought, "How dare he not be here waiting for me." I thought, "Isn't it bad enough that I'm coming out here to do him a favor? That he can't even be here." Then I thought, "Oh really, so since he lives so close to here, he just figures that he's going to stay at his place and wait for me to bring the lights to him? How inconsiderate of him."

All of these thoughts are crossing my mind. As a result of these thoughts crossing my mind, other thoughts are crossing my mind. I'm having physiological changes. My blood pressure's rising, my pulse is quickening. Any number of things that doesn't translate to something good. Then, the real me takes over, and I always reframe things and paint them in a way so that they benefit me. At least benefit me in terms of how good they make me feel. I realized that, you know, there must be another explanation. I turned by phone back on, which I've told you I turn off when I'm driving, and I called him on the phone. I said to him, "Where are you?" I don't do it accusatorily. I just ask him. He says he's at my house. And I say, "What are you doing at my house?" He says he's waiting for me.

Even though when I was on the phone I said, "I'll meet you down there." Even though I said, "I guess you want to have the lights before 8 o'clock in the morning because that'll be to late. We can't wait til tomorrow. We have to do this tonight." As far as I'm concerned, I made it clear that I was going to be down at the office where the lights were, it wasn't clear to him. Believe me, he actually said to me, "Wow, I wish I had known. That would have been a lot easier trip for me." It would have been a lot easier trip for him.

Him and I have similar temperaments and we are going to make the best of whatever we're dealt. We both made the best out of that situation. As it turns out, I picked up the lights, took it to his establishment. Helped him set it up and all was good. The message for you is, just because you don't know something doesn't mean it's not true. Just because something is unclear to you, doesn't mean that you need to experience it. In fact, there's no way that you could know all the great things that's happening for you right now. Particularly, if you focus on the bad things that are happening to you right now.

Take heart. You don't know what you don't know. What you don't know could be the very thing that you're in love with. I hope this blog has helped you. I hope you move closer to taking control of your mind, not allowing it to run roughshod over you. Please pass this blog on to somebody you know and someone that you care about.

I end this blog just like I end all the rest of them when I say to you, you have yourself a good time until the next time.

Coaches Corner~Liberties

Part of what makes us human beings is our tendency to feel obligated a lot of the time. Many of us feel obligated to do certain things, and while we may not want to do them, we do them. Because the feeling we get from doing them far outweighs the discomfort we get from not doing them. I guess it's a sort of a paradox.

We all know people whose habit, it seems, is to stretch us. They ask us to do things that we do not want to do for one reason or another, and then they expect us to do it. I have been characterized as one of those people. People have described me in my past as someone who takes liberties, someone who asked them to do things that nobody else would ask them to do. In a sense, I guess that's true. When you know the rest of the story, it will start to make sense to you why I sometimes seem as though I am exceeding my authority. If you knew me and the things that I did, perhaps you would find that you're a lot like that yourself. It's hard to get outside of yourself and look at yourself, though.

Recently, a good friend of mine had asked me to borrow some studio lights. One of my companies uses studio lights to produce videos. Now he asked me to do this some time ago, and as it turns out, his event was tomorrow morning from the time I'm recording this. I had just arrived home from, I guess, a busy day. When I drive, I turn my telephone off. I turn my telephone off even though it's not off now because I'm writing this blog as I'm driving. I wasn't able to get his message. I wasn't able to hear from him. Granted, his messages should have come several hours ago, but they were just coming. Here it is, 9:00 at night, and he has an event that starts at 9:00 tomorrow morning, and he needs some lights. The lights are at least 30 minutes away, which means that I would have to put my clothes back on, put my shoes back on, get into my vehicle, and drive down to where the lights were.

The other choice was to get up earlier tomorrow morning and go pick up the lights and make sure that he had them by 9 AM. Now he is a diligent young man and he realizes that if an event starts at 9, he needs to be ready by 6 or 7. I asked him what time did he want the lights, and he said he would at least like to be home by 8. Now I know he wanted to be home before that, but he was trying to be considerate because he knew it was 9 at night. I am sure that he could feel my reluctance to leave home that night.

We're talking about me and how I take liberties by asking people to do things that no ordinary person would ask them to do. That's what this blog is about. It turns out that he is not only my associate; he is one of my mentees. He is not only my mentee, but he is my friend and I like him. Mind you, if I didn't like him, I don't know that my behavior would have been much different, because after all, I am an extraordinary coach. But it didn't take me very long at all, probably 6/10 of a second, for me to tell him, "You know, tomorrow morning is going to be too late. We need to go get those lights tonight."

I sensed that he had something else on his table that he wanted to do that night as well, but he wanted the lights. I get in my vehicle and I drive down to the place, prepared to give him the light.  He may not know it, he may not know it at least until he reads this blog, that there may come a time when I will ask him to do something that he doesn't want to do. If this reeks of The Godfather, don't worry about it. I'm not going to shoot him dead. But the Godfather was well known as a man who knew how to repay a favor. I guess I'm a man who knows how to repay a favor as well, but I certainly hope that my friend knows how to repay a favor.

When the time comes, and I don't know when that time is, it may never come, but if and when that time comes and I ask him to do something that he doesn't want to do, when I ask him to do something that means something to me, you had better believe that he's going to remember tonight.

The point of this blog is, if you are an extraordinary coach, you will be stretching your clients. If you will be stretching your clients, you will be asking them to do things that they don't want to do, even though those things are for their own good. It may take them a while to recognize that it's for their own good, and during that time period, the only thing that they're going to see, the only thing that they're going to experience, is you taking liberties with them. Be that as it may, to take them to the next level, to help them get what they want to get, you have got to take them there. In order for you to influence people to do more than what they want just because you asked, you have got to be willing to do more than what you want just because they asked.

I had a man tell me some time ago, when the time comes to do the right thing, you do the right thing whether you like it or not. Make a commitment to be that person that goes the extra mile. When you are the one that goes the extra mile, you can influence others to go the extra mile. At the end of the day, everyone wins. Because going the extra mile can be taking chance on losing, and if you won at everything that you attempted to do, you're not living your whole life.

Hey, if this blog has helped you in any way, shape, form or fashion, I want you to pass it on to somebody. You may end up even passing it on to the person that I'm talking about. If not, I hope you enjoyed it anyway. I end this blog like I end all of my blogs. That is for you to have yourself a good time until the next time.

Coaches Corner~Lying

Once again, let's get clear on the fact that I believe that God made us. I believe that everything that we were given, God gave it to us to enhance our life. Everything: even our ability to think, our tendency to create meaning where there's no meaning. I believe that was given to us by God.

In scripture we are told that we are able to call those things that be not as though they were. Let's meditate on that scripture: call those things that be not as though they were. In our world, in my finite world, that amounts to lying. Yes, lying. It is my contention that the Bible tells us to lie. Much of the character traits that we attribute to godliness is the result of our own imagination in many ways. Really? It is the way that we think of things that give them their meaning. You may think that you are lying when you tell someone that you are definitely going to do something, or you may think you are not lying when you tell someone you're definitely going to do something and you don't do it. My assessment is that if you tell me that you are definitely going to do something, that translates to me as you definitely won't do it.

What does all this mean? Recently, I found myself promising a client of mine that I would get something to him by the end of the day. Now if you're in business you know that "By the end of the day" is one of those phrases that really sounds nice. It has a nice ring to it, and I like saying it. "Oh, I'll have that to you by the end of business today." It's one of my favorite things to tell my clients.

Now as for lying, when I don't consciously know that I'm going to do something by the end of the day, then I'm lying, and you are lying too. When you tell me that you are definitely going to do something and it's not clear to you that you are going to do it, you haven't made a decision that you're going to do it, then you too are lying.

Now lying, and that's just our term for it, God probably calls it something else, by any other means, is something that we can use to hurt others, we can use to deceive others. The Bible doesn't teach us to deceive others, but it does teach us to call those things that be not as though they were. Let's just say that you were to use lying for your good and not to deceive others.

One way that lying can be used for your good is that when you have a tendency to think that someone is trying to hurt you, then tell yourself that they're not. Because you can't read somebody's mind. You don't know why they're doing what they're doing. It may hurt you, that is true, but whether or not they are trying to hurt you is something that you have no idea about.

One of my favorite leadership trainers is a lady named Byron Katie. Byron Katie uses four questions to assess any situation that brings you anxiety. The first of these questions is: "Is that true?" The next question is: "How can you know that's true?" If you can't know something is true, it doesn't matter whether you know it's true or not. If you treat it as true, it may as well be true.  The other questions are not relevant to this discussion.

I'm urging you as an extraordinary coach to get present to this tendency to lie and only lie to yourself, and once again, if you don't know something to be true, maybe you're lying to yourself, and maybe you're not. When we speak things in faith, we are lying. When we say things to help ourselves move forward, we are lying. God loves us whether we lie or not. Any meaning that's given to a lie that you tell is a meaning that's created by the person listening. In the business world, many people aspire to be great, many people to make a phenomenal income. They're told to set goals. They're told to set their goals as in the now. For instance, rather than saying "I'm going to make a million dollars this year," you ought to say, "I make a million dollars this year." Now if you don't have a plan in place to make a million dollars really, aren't you lying?

Now this use of the term lying may be extreme, but the point that I want to make is that everything is about you no matter all the platitudes you hear saying it's about someone else. When you lie to yourself, you do it often enough, you will come to believe it. In our society there are many lies that have come to be true in the minds of millions of people simply because they were repeated time and time again. Repeat the lie that you want to be true to yourself over and over and over again and marvel at it when it comes to past.

This whole blog originated when I recently told my client that I was going to tell him about whether or not my software provided him with a membership site, and I would tell him that before the end of the day. I didn't tell him that before the end of the day. In fact, I didn't think about it again until this morning, even though when I said it I meant well. Guard the every word given to others. Be mindful of the fact that others rely heavily on what you say. Say things to yourself before you say it to others just to get used to how it sounds. If you want something to be true then say it's true. Say I have integrity. Say I am faithful. Say I walk in love. Say I'm the healed and not the sick. Say I leave great treasures for my children. Those things may be a lie now, but it's a lie that you want to believe.

Finally, when God says say those things that be not as though they were, that is a lie that you are really, really excited about telling yourself. If this blog has helped you, tell somebody. Until next time, have a good time.

Coaches Corner~Egomaniac

I'm often accused of being an egomaniac. I'm often accused of loving myself too much. People make these assertions based on the words that come out of my mouth and the stories I tell on a consistent basis. I am an extraordinary coach and I know it. You are an extraordinary coach whether you know it or not. You are an extraordinary human being. Coaches are who my market is, so that's why I focus on extraordinary coaches.

I assert that were I to be followed around by somebody and they were taking notes on the things I did and didn't do, they would come to the conclusion that I justifiably love myself. I love myself because not only of what I get, but I love myself because of how I feel when I inspire others. I love myself for the sort of things that I do that I characterize as loving and forgiving.

I just recently did a blog on inspire. On the very day I was driving to the office after I did that blog, I was moved to do this blog. The reason why is that I found an instance to be inspiring. I was driving along a two-lane country-like road. Traffic was minor, slow, which means that I couldn't see anyone behind me for half a mile or a mile or so. Up ahead was a fire truck on the incoming lane from where I was driving. Big fire truck it was, and it was partially blocking the lane.

Ordinary-sized cars were able to drive by, but say a vehicle about the size of the fire engine wouldn't be small enough to get by. Wouldn't you know it, directly behind the fire truck, trying to come towards me, was a huge dump truck. In fact, it could have been one of those cement trucks that mixes cement while they're driving. Back in the day we used to call them ready mix.

Now the car in front of me just drove right on by. I'm about a quarter of a mile or half a mile behind that car. I see all the cars lining up behind the dump truck. Now get a visual of what I'm saying, because the cars behind the dump truck, they would be able to go around the fire truck and go on about their business, but the huge dump truck wasn't able to do so.

I decided that I would stop way behind the line of demarcation, the line where the truck could go around the fire engine and do it safely. I stopped there for a couple seconds. I suppose the guy driving that big old dump truck was kind of astonished because he sat there momentarily and didn't move. Then he realized that there was a good Samaritan and he would be able to circumvent that ... that they were able to get around that day because the sort of traffic jam that they were experiencing, well, maybe what I did was unnecessary. Maybe behind me the road would have been clear for miles and miles, and they could have passed by unobstructed.

You know what? It doesn't matter. What matters is that I created a story. What matters is that I inspired someone. What matters is that people had a great day and I had a part of it. When you examine that behavior and when you examine that activity, it's no wonder that I spend a majority of my life thinking about how great a guy I am.

I don't spend a majority of my time talking about how great a guy I am because others will do that. But thinking of myself as a great guy actually creates situations where I have a chance to be a great guy. Whenever I have a chance to be a great guy, I take it. If this blog has helped you in any way, shape, form, or fashion, I want to encourage you to do yourself a favor and pass this blog on to someone you know who you care about. I end this blog like I end all the rest of them. You have a good time until the next time.

Coaches Corner~Inspire

It is said that our habits define us. It is also said that if you examine a man's habit, you can pretty much predict what his life is about. One habit that I want to talk about today that's peculiarly significant as an extraordinary coach is the habit of inspiring others. Do you inspire others? Are you easily inspired?

These are two critical questions for my blog today because, depending on your answer to both, that says who you are. If you are indeed an extraordinary coach, then it is your habit to inspire others. You want to inspire others to greatness. How, you may ask, do you inspire one to greatness? Well, let's take a look at that.

Greatness, as we all know, is a non-specific characteristics that given to many people. President Barack Obama is great. Martin Luther King is great. Jesus Christ is great. You are great, as am I. What makes these people great, in no small way, is the way that they control their feelings. Imagine this: someone has made you angry and you blow up at them and you tell them exactly how you feel. You do, as we say, give them a peace of your mind.

Ask yourself, who looks at that behavior, who looks at that activity and says to themself, "Oh boy, I would like to be able to do that?" Let's just say you're married and your wife wants to watch  the Bill O'Reilly show, and you want to watch the football game. You bully her, you take the remote from her, and you force her to sit with you and watch the football game whether she wants to or not. Is that inspiring? Is that something that people look at and say, "Oh my goodness, I wish I could do that"?  Inspirational activities are those that impact others to say, "Wow, I wish I could do that!"  "That was awesome!"

Let's further examine these two specific behaviors. Number one, do you need practice to do either one of them? Does either one of them go against the grain for you? Are either one of those activities helping someone else? Are either one of those activities something that you would be proud to tell your mother or your best friend that you did?

You see, these are my benchmarks for greatness. These seems simple and uncomplicated, but it is in these small ways that we demonstrate our greatness, and our greatness inspires others. As you go through your day accomplishing things or not accomplishing things, you're also having thoughts on a consistent basis. Does your thoughts included things like: who can I help today? Does your thought include things like: hmm, I wonder if I'll get caught?

You see, after a while, you begin to figure out what greatness is and what greatness isn't. Now this blog isn't about greatness; this blog is about inspiring others. You may have heard that you can tell what a person is thinking by what they do. Now if you are thinking all the good things that can happen to you, how much money you can get, is that inspiring? You're going to have to be the judge of that. I can't.

The reason I thought of this blog this morning is I found myself being selfish. You better believe there is no inspiration for anyone else for me being selfish. Selfishness only helps me. Revenge only helps me. If you are embracing those two characteristics, well they're only helping you. Let's see as an extraordinary coach if we can adopt the habit of being inspiring.

What this blog is about is that I'm giving you real world examples of what it means. In the Bible it says that he who is faithful in small things will be given greater things. The things I'm talking about seem small, but if you can be inspiring in those small ways, you can be inspiring in greater ways. We all really want to be inspiring.

I've also heard that there's no such thing as standing still. Either you're moving forward or you're moving backwards. If you have not made a conscious decision to inspire others, then you need inspiration yourself. If you are not inspiring others to great things, you're inspiring others to mediocre things. Inspiring people is a decision that you must actively make as an extraordinary coach. As an extraordinary coach, it is absolutely critical that you decide that you are going to inspire others. The most difficult thing about inspiring others is what you do the most when you're alone. What do you spend your time thinking about? What do you do when you are alone? Because it is who you are when you're alone that determines what you do.

If you are a person that spends six, seven hours a day watching television, it doesn't matter what you're watching because you're only edifying yourself. Many people have made the commitments that they love to learn. I love to learn as well, but when you learn something, just on the strength of learning it, who are you inspiring? Who are you helping? Chances are, you already know how to do something. I already know how to do something. We can be much more inspiring if we teach, because when you teach, you teach something to someone. You give them something. You give them the experience that you have when you're learning. How inspirational is that?

The key to this blog, the meat and potatoes of this blog, is that you must make a decision to be inspiring. You must actively inspire others. You must seek people to inspire, seek situations where you can inspire, or you're inspiring people to be mediocre. That's just the plain, honest truth.

I hope I've inspired you by writing this particular blog. I hope you are inspired to do great things by reading this particular blog. If you are not, someone will be inspired that I took the time to do it. If this blog has helped you, done anything for you, made you feel better, inspired you, I would love for you to pass it on to someone else. I end this blog just like I love to end all of my blogs, which is for you to have a good time until the next time.

Coaches Corner~Girl

As an extraordinary coach, you probably have clients that are trying to grow personally. You, yourself may be trying to be better than you were and when you do that, sometimes you get stumped. Every now and then I have to wonder whether or not I'm imagining that someone is insulting me or whether or not I'm truly being insulted. People that know you, people that are your friend generally are not trying to insult you. Occasionally, to teach you some lesson, someone will insult you for whatever reason. At the end of the day, most of the insults or the offenses that we take, they are purely in our mind. We then walk around not forgiving someone for something that they don't even know that they did. Of course, when we get insulted, we don't like it one little bit. Now if you find yourself getting insulted on a regular basis or having to deal with offenses on a consistent basis, there might be something that you're thinking that's making that happen.

There are 2 ways to approach this dilemma and the first way is that someone really is insulting you. Someone really is offending you, and they're offending you for any number of reasons. You have to ask yourself, what is it that you're thinking that's attracting this sort of behavior to you? What is it that you're thinking that's causing you to feel that way because typically, our subconscious minds will find a way to have us feel whatever way that we think we ought to feel. In no small way, the life that we live is of our own doings, and the thoughts that we have are of our own thinking. Only when something resonates with what we already think do we even have a reaction at all. I recently was in a discussion with a very good friend who told me that she was offended by the word "girl." The word girl conjured up images none too flattering in her mind. Now the word girl by itself is pretty antiseptic and non-toxic and why someone would think that the word girl was something awful, it would have more to do with what the someone is thinking than what the person is saying.

As she was sharing her heart with me and telling me about someone who called her a "girl" and how she had to correct him and have him stop, I innocently asked a question, "Does he like you?" All I meant was, is this person a friend or is this person a foe? I even quoted the Bible where it said, "Faithful are the wounds of a friend," and that kisses of an enemy is deceitful, which basically means that someone's actions is going to line up with who they are. If their actions do not line up with who they are, there's a very good reason, and there's a likely explanation. When someone does something that offends you, either that person is trying to offend you, or you are trying to be offended. In either case, you can change it. Back to my friend. I asked her if this person liked her. She thought, what difference does it make whether he likes me or not, which is a reasonable question. Of course, she got very emotional, and I wasn't able to really share much after that because all she did was started reliving the offense of someone calling her girl.

I have often said that what you think something is, is what that something is. What you decide things are going to be is what they are going to be. The point that I was trying to make to her was totally missed as she shared with me the idiocy of caring how a man felt about her when he treated her badly. The point that I was making to my friend, my dear friend, was that she may have been mistaking what he was saying. If it turns out that the word "girl" has images of her that's non-flattering, it would be ludicrous of her to try to get everybody in the world to quit referring to her as a "girl" because some people just do. If she wanted to set people straight each time they used the word "girl," then she was going to have a long list. I see nothing wrong with the term "girl," and the images that she conjured up when someone called her "girl," I see something wrong with that.

What I'm telling you in this blog as an extraordinary coach, be present to the fact that the reactions of your clients may not be legitimate. There is this ego defense mechanism called defensiveness and lots of people have it. This defensiveness lives purely on words called grabbers. Those are words that when people use them, they immediately cause a reaction in you. If you do not want to be at the mercy of the people outside of your brain, if you do not want to be tossed to and fro by people who do not pay your bills, then you have got to get a hold of yourself and eliminate these grabbers. Eliminating these grabbers may be a difficult thing to do but if you would go through the painstaking process of eliminating these grabbers, you will find yourself getting more healthy. Certainly it is not healthy to endure discomfort. It's not healthy to endure offenses. If someone is purposely trying to hurt you, then that's another completely different story.

What I'm suggesting is that you not allow yourself to be thrown off your game because someone used a word innocently that you perceived as something horrible. The point of this blog is that every time you think you're being offended, you're not being offended. You may just have some subconscious work to do. Those of us that are trying to get better, we probably know this. Just in case, you are an extraordinary coach, and you haven't gotten to this point yet, be on the lookout because these grabbers will sneak up on you and grab you by the throat. If you know anyone that this blog can help, I encourage you to have them read this blog. If on the other hand this blog has helped you, then go ahead and pass it on. I end this blog like I end all my blogs. I would like for you to do me a favor and have a good time until the next time.

Coaches Corner~Reactionary

Reading this particular blog, you get a whole lot on self-management. As far as I'm concerned, self-mastery is the only game in town, and as an extraordinary coach it might benefit you to adopt the idea that self-mastery is the only game in town. I would spend most of my time mastering myself. By mastering myself, I mean examining my prejudices. I mean thinking about what things mean to me. I mean examining what my main purpose is in life. For business reasons we want to have a vision for our business, and that's quite okay, but your business is only a microcosm of your life, and what's life? Apart from life there is nothing. Some people say love is everything, but love is nothing without life.

The reason I even talk about this this morning is that I want to get a little bit personal, more personal than before. As you know, I am a married person, and your marriage relationship is probably the biggest relationship in your life, and even though your marriage relationship is the biggest relationship in your life, your relationship to yourself is big as well. We all have a voice that speaks to us that says things and it filters what God is saying to us and it tells us what it thinks that we ought to be thinking. If you're wondering what voice I'm talking about, I'm talking about the voice that says, "What's he talking about?" See, that's not you, because from a spiritual standpoint you connect with me and you connect with every other spirit in the world.

This morning, I want to talk about how we, as people, put so much more on what we hear than what we put on what we say. When people say things to us we create a whole story surrounding what they say and have it mean so much more than what it means. I do that, too, and I am afflicted with the looking good and being right syndrome just like everybody else, but what I do is I reframe everything so that it benefits me so that it makes me feel like the champion that I know I am. Reframing everything causes me to feel empowered in every situation. You may think it's arrogant to desire power in every situation, and that's fine, but that's not what I think. I think to be powerful in every situation is what the human being desires.

In order to love, you must come from a place of power, and I choose to love in every circumstance. I had just been recently tapped to be the MC at an event where Dr. Bernice King, who is the daughter of the late Martin Luther King Junior, was to speak. I was excited about this thing and told everyone I knew I about it. I thought that everyone that I knew included my wife, but as it turns out, I did not include my wife in the list of people who I told about this particular event. It was an oversight on my part, but it doesn't speak to what I feel about my wife. It just speaks to me having an oversight in some cases.

Today, Labor Day, which is about three weeks from when this event takes place, I happen to mention it to a friend on the telephone and my wife overhears me, and that was the first time that she heard of it. Immediately she called me to the carpet for not telling her. After all, she is only my wife, and as being only my wife, I believe that she should feel obligated that I tell her what's going on in my life. However, the rest of what she told me was not called for and was probably just her thinking. She reminded me that I never honor her. She reminded me that I don't think that she's important. Of course I think my wife is important. I've been married to her for 23 years.

This story is not about me and my wife. This story is about you and your spouse, or you and the special person in your life. If the special person in your life does something that you have decided means something, then you have to examine your motives for believing so. If you feel that you are a champion and that you can accomplish anything in this world, then it doesn't matter to you what is said to you because the only thing that will resonate with you is the thing that you believe. If, on the other hand, you have an underlying fear of not being good enough, or if on the other hand you think that someone doesn't care about you because you don't look good enough, you're not tall enough, you're not short enough, you're not black enough, you're not white enough, or any number of "enoughs" that we can think of, then it is time for you to examine how you feel about you.

Whenever you find yourself feeling defensive or find yourself feeling out of that love place where I like to spend my time, you may want to examine why you feel that way, and you can use as an excuse something that someone said, or you can use as an excuse something that you read, but at the end of the day, anything you read or hear has absolutely zero effect on you, unless at some level you have been telling yourself those very same things. When you feel put upon by your spouse or anyone that's close to you, they are not the problem, because they are simply being themselves, and no one is obligated to do what you want to do so that you can feel good about yourself.

It is critical as an extraordinary coach that you are present to the fact that many of us suffer from this malady and many of us fall prey to thinking the wrong things about ourselves, and then holding the other person accountable when they say something that resonates with what we think about ourselves. Practice telling yourself that you love yourself. Spend time being with you and talking about how wonderful you are. Sit down, make a list of your positive traits and treat your clients the same way. Tell your clients that 99% of what happens to them is how they react to what transpires, and they are in control of how they react simply by choosing to do things before the stimulus is applied.

Feel good about yourself. Love yourself. Never think that you are less than your best, and coach your clients to do the same. Most of the relationships in our lives, if they are suffering, they are suffering because of a breakdown in the relationships that we have with ourselves. My relationship with myself is intact. You better believe it, and if you've read this blog, you've heard the story of me telling myself "I love myself " on end. You might want to tell yourself that you love yourself, because when you don't have a relationship with yourself that beats the band, well then, you're going to find yourself in victim status more often than not. You're going to find yourself depending on what someone else does or says to make you feel good about you.

Quit depending on what someone else does and depend on what you do. There's a reason that our Creator allowed us to be able to ignore things, and there's a reason that we are able to lie to ourselves, and I submit that those two characteristics are made solely for our good, just like everything else that he gave us, and if we're not using it for our good, then that's on us, not on the person that's impacting us.

Now if this blog has helped you or given you a new thought, wow, I'm excited to hear that, and I'm looking to increase the rolls of people who  are not reactive to what they hear. I'm looking to swell those rolls up so that everyone knows that they are walking in love, and slowly but surely, even the people that you think are offending you, they will begin to walk in love and stop allowing you to run their flag up and down the pole. I end this blog like I end all of my blogs, and I encourage you to have yourself a good time until the next time.

Coaches Corner~Politics

Greetings, extraordinary coaches. I want to go on record as saying that politics is a difficult game. As an extraordinary coach, you may find yourself in conversation with others during this political season, and I'm sure you have an affinity for a particular candidate, and sometimes your client has an affinity for a different one. What if we applied the technology that we use in coaching to the technology that we use in the presidency? Rather than simply lining up on one side of the aisle or the other, let's ask ourselves what's working, what's not working, what's missing, and what's next. If we do those things, I believe that we will come to a clear understanding of what the politician's job is all about.

Say that you are a politician and you have gotten 50% to 60% of the vote. There's still 40% of the people that did not vote for you who are entitled to have you look after them. Even though they didn't vote for you, they are still part of your populace, and even though your ideas might be different from their ideas, you have to find a way to keep them happy.

To begin with, people that depend on politicians for happiness, I think that that would be under the idea of what's not working. The difficulty with being a politician is that inherent in the game is a bit of stretching the truth. The truth of life in America here is that whatever you decide to have in America, you're going to have in America. Whatever results you get is going to be as a result of what you did. Granted, what you did is going to depend on what you feel, but most people don't have control of their feelings and they rely on outside forces to control their feelings. Many times that outside force is the words of a politician.

I think we all remember several years ago when President Obama rolled into the White House on a wave of enthusiasm and excitement that was heretofore unequaled. Here was the first black president, the first black president that had a beautiful family, the first black president who was as articulate as any other president, coming into the White House, and everyone loved it and his poll numbers were fantastic. Even he loved it. I mean, really, how could you not love it when you got that many people adoring you?

But now here he is, several years later, and there's an opposite truth, isn't it? Many of the people that elected him, they're criticizing him, they're disapproving of him, and that is really just the nature of things. Doubtless, President Obama wants to love people and help people, just like the rest of us. No matter what success we end up having, it really doesn't matter if we don't have anybody to share it with. It really doesn't matter if we don't have an audience to applause us for our successes. So, when someone is criticized or when their poll numbers are down, you better believe it impacts them. Perhaps it's not impacting them as much as it would impact you, and then also, perhaps it would impact you greater than what you can imagine.

The reason I'm doing this blog today is I'm just watching how the story of Dr. Ben Carson is unfolding. Dr. Ben Carson is a phenomenal human being. He's done major pediatric surgery. He's helped a whole lot of people and he wants to help a whole lot more. Now he wants to be the president of the United States, and he's receiving much accolades. He's receiving a lot of praise, he's receiving a lot of "Go, Ben, go!" But what does that really mean? That means that a lot of people are hanging their hat on what he can do for them. It means a lot of people are excited about him stepping up to become the president of the United States. He himself is really excited about it, because now he thinks that he can help even more people.

I wouldn't describe myself as a cynic, but if you got everything that you want right now, today, you probably still wouldn't be happy, because being unhappy is the default position for a human being. When we talk about happiness, we talk about how we will marry the person that makes us happy. We talk about how we can pursue our goals if it makes us happy. So if we need all these things, if we allude to all these things to make us happy, doesn't it seem like the default position is unhappy? Right now the prospect of Dr. Ben Carson becoming the president of the United States is making a lot of people happy. Some of those people are happy just because, like me, and then other sort of people are happy because they think that Dr. Ben Carson is going to do something for them.

As an extraordinary coach, you, along with your clients, want to keep ascending up that continuum of greatness. You don't want to come down that mountain. You want to go up that mountain and get better and better and better as days go by. In order for you to do that, what happens externally has to be a non-issue. Certainly you want to pick somebody, certainly you want your candidate to win. But whether or not this person or that person becomes the president of the United States is of no concern of those of us in America that are entrepreneurs, because if you are an exceptional coach, you are in the right vehicle, this capitalistic society we have in America.

Despite all its criticisms, you have the ability to do whatever it is that you want to do. Despite the complaints of inequities, you have the ability to make as much money as you want if you do what it takes to get that much money. You must, first of all, control your feelings so that it doesn't make any difference to you who wins the presidency of the United States. That cannot control you and make you happy or unhappy. The reason that you have to stay happy, the reason that you have to stay excited, is that how you feel determines what you do and what you do determines what you get.

Keep all that in mind as you ride the wave of the excitement of the presidential political season. Be excited, be involved, but be not deceived, because it's on you to make those great things happen in your life, as long as you live in America, anyway. If this blog has helped you or given you a new thought, I encourage you to share it with someone you know, and I end this blog like I end all of my blogs. I want to encourage you, today and every day, to have a good time until the next time.

Coaches Corner~Justifications

As an extraordinary coach I certainly recommend that everyone benefits from joining a Toastmasters club. The mission of a Toastmasters club is to provide a mutually supportive and a positive learning environment where every member is given the opportunity to develop communication and leadership skills which in turn fosters self confidence and personal growth. You may wonder why this blog is beginning by discussing the merits of Toastmasters and in a very few short moments you will know why.

We all want to be better than we are now and there's really nothing wrong with that. But part of our quest to be better is to say better things to yourself. Being a Toastmaster helps you communicate better and when you communicating with others you're also communicating with yourself. Being able to tell ourselves the things that we want to hear in the way that we want to hear them. It is critical that we know how to actually do that.

The thought about Toastmasters came as a result of the thought that I'm having now which is the idea of making excuses. Toastmasters teach you how to speak in front of a room and speaking to other people and that is really important. The person that has the biggest impact on you when speaking is when you are speaking to yourself. You want to become very good at articulating yourself. My attitude is one of avoiding complaining. There's a certain thing that happens to you when you complain. When you say things the things that you say they create certain pictures in your mind and those pictures in your mind create certain emotions. These emotions determine whether you do anything or not and it also determines what you do whenever you do something.

I gotta tell you since I started doing different things I started getting different things. All this is leading up to the big lesson that I want to share in this particular blog and that is about the power of excuses. When you are sharing your story with someone as you would learn to do in Toastmasters the way that you share a story also says something about you. The only message that you want to send about you is that you are a winner, you are an over comer, and you don't make excuses for your behavior. You simply put yourself under the sort of scrutiny that other people might put you through except when you put yourself through it's a lot more harsh.

I was just listening to someone on the radio who was saying that people make excuses for President Obama. People make excuses for Donald Trump. He was lamenting this as a detriment in the life of the person making an excuse. I don't think he understands exactly what's going on. No matter what you say or how you say it you hear every word that you say. Once upon a time Zig Ziglar said that he believes it's ok to talk to yourself and some people question that, but he went on to say that the only thing that would trouble him when you were talking to yourself is if you ever said "huh?." If you said something and you didn't hear what you said well that was problematic.

Getting back to what I was saying, when you complain you release certain toxic chemicals into your blood that render you ineffective at whatever it is you're trying to do. When you complain you also tend to want to invest your energy to try to rectify what it is that you're complaining about. Neither of these things is productive. If you want to talk with me about any particular person place or thing and you are criticizing it or talking about how it doesn't work for you you would get in an argument with me. It wouldn't be a real argument though because what I would really be doing would be defending the person. I don't have to defend the person when I'm talking to them. I don't have to defend the person when I'm talking to you. But whenever I defend the person I put myself in a different mindset. I absolutely am committed to not complaining, especially after I found out that complaining about somebody else complaining is complaining. Rather than complain, I simply share ideas and if they work for you fine.

As an extraordinary coach you will find that many of my ideas to work for you as me being a complainer is the last thing that crosses your mind. Whenever you are faced with a situation where someone is being criticized or condemned I urge you to reject that. By rejecting that I mean make as many excuses as you want for the person's behavior but not to excuse the person but to put yourself in a place where you want to be. You may get criticized for being soft. You might get criticized for giving some people the benefit of the doubt or letting them off the hook. Don't even concern yourself with that. What they say to you is not important. What they say to you is simply their version of a complaint.

I've been promoting the idea of forgiveness for a long time and people think that when I say forgive that I'm letting the person off the hook. Nothing could be further from the truth. I'm letting me off the hook. When I give people excuses for their behavior I'm doing it for me not them. When you get people excuses for their behavior you are doing it for you not them. Somehow this idea of giving excuses for people is letting them off the hook, you don't let anybody off the hook because they're not on the hook to begin with. They may be suffering from a negative opinion you have of them, but they're not on the hook for that. They don't even care about that because that is not on their mind. The crux of this blog is make excuses for other people's bad behavior, so that you can forgive them, so that you can walk in love. Eliminate the concern that others may have about you letting them off the hook or about you being soft because at the end of the day none of those people are paying your bills or doing anything else for you that matters.   All you are concerned with is those destructive chemicals you release into your bloodstream when you complain.

If this blog has helped you or giving you a new thought please by all means share it with somebody. I end this blog like it and all of my blogs encouraging you to have a good time until the next time.

Coaches Corner~Blessed

Your clients are having these sort of experiences every day, and as an extraordinary coach it would behoove you to help them be present to these sorts of experiences. Earlier I was talking with a friend and telling them how much I expect God to bless me. You may interpret this as me being a selfish person and thinking that God is my genie and he gives me what I want, but suffice it to say, I consider that God blesses me in every situation.

Several days apart, two instances concerning money impacted my thoughts about this process. It went a long way to cementing my idea that yes, God loves me and things will go my way if I meditate on the fact that God loves me and he wants me to have what I want.

I was counting change. I have a machine that counts my change for me and separates them in penny, nickels, dimes, and quarters. I was counting change because my cash flow that particular day was pretty low. I'm counting change and I have a stack of dimes. I want to complete the stack of dimes so the dime is $5. I needed two more dimes to complete this stack. I didn't have two dimes in the place where I keep all my change, so I'm thinking there's got to be two dimes around here somewhere. Either in my car or in my house there has to be two dimes.

I don't think much more about it. I go in my bathroom to brush my teeth and get ready. I notice in a tray in my vanity I guess, that's what my wife calls it, I see two dimes. Immediately I start rejoicing and I put on my happy face because God has blessed me again with yet those two dimes.

I pick up the two coins and I go back outside of my bedroom to the place where I have the coin counter, the change counter, and guess what? Those two items were not dimes at all. Now you may think that that's a small thing, but as it turns out, I didn't even need those two dimes. I didn't even need the change.

Fast forward a few days later, which is today, and I'm at the bank. I'm in the ATM machine. I put my ATM card in and I want to get ... and I'm being specific here in order to make a point ... I'm getting $160. Now I see a choice that I hadn't noticed before. The machine asked me, "Will a mixture of 50s and 20s do or do you want all 20s?" I chose a mixture of 50s and 20s.

I walked to my car. I get in my car. I put my hands in my pocket to get my keys out. Out falls one or two bills, so I picked up the one or two bills. Turns out they were all my bills and there were only five bills. I spent a few minutes looking around my car trying to find where the other two 20s are, because you know that five times 20 is 100, and I asked for $160.

Point of fact, I had five bills in my hand and I needed really to be looking for three more bills, but somehow in my brain I'm looking for two more because I think that all I need is 40 more dollars. Then I get the idea that oh my goodness, when I put my hands in my pocket as I left the bank I must have accidentally pulled out those two bills and they're now flying in the wind or somebody has them in their pocket.

I wasn't too concerned about it; I wasn't too frantic about it. I simply decided that if the money was gone, I would simply go back to the ATM machine and get some more. Going back to the ATM machine I was sure that I had asked for $100 after I decided I couldn't find the other 60. I'm sure that I had asked for $100 instead of $160, so I'm thinking in my mind, how could I have pressed 100 instead of 160? Well, no matter; I blew it off.

Anyone that knows me will tell you it is typically my habit to blow things off, and sometimes that costs me and sometimes it doesn't. But, my relationship with God dictates that I will always win. As an extraordinary coach, maybe you don't have a relationship with God. Maybe you don't believe in God. Whatever the case may be, as someone speaking to extraordinary coaches, helping them be more extraordinary, it is my duty to share with you what works for me. As you recall, I often use the technology what works, what's not working, what's next, and what's missing. That's a whole other blog which you will hear later.

I go to the machine, and as I get to the machine I realize that I had chosen the option to get a mixture of 20s and 50s. Then I pulled the bills out of my pocket and look at them, and guess what? Instead of five or six $20 bills that were in my pocket, there were two 50s and three 20s, which is $160, which is what I thought I had, which is what I had. Once again, God had blessed me. Once again, he had given me what I want. Once again, I did not fret because the results were exactly what I wanted.

What about you? As an extraordinary coach, you must teach your clients to always expect the best. You must teach your clients that no matter what it looks like, the best will always come out for them. A wise man said everything works out in the end, and everything does. Everything works out all right in the end, and everything does, which tells you two things. Number one: if things haven't worked out, that means it's not yet the end. Number two: it is going to be all right no matter how it feels now. I ask you if this blog has helped you in any way, please share it with somebody you know, somebody you like, somebody you trust. I end this blog as I love to end all of my blogs, which is for you to have a good time until the next time.

Coaches Corner~Excusitis

Recently, I had the opportunity to once again remind myself that nobody is exempt from the pitfalls of life. No matter how sophisticated you are, how smart you are, or how advanced you are, or how forward thinking you are, you too can fall prey to the assertion that racism is a bigger deal than what it is. You see, racism is a matter of perception because you can't tell what somebody thinks. You can only tell what they do. In fact, we tend to judge other people by what they do and expect people to judge us on what we meant to do. You can see it in your own life. As an extraordinary coach, you probably do things that your clients or maybe even other people might think are questionable. You wonder why they attack you because you have a real good reason for doing what you did. Contrast that to the way that you respond when you see other people do things. Since you don't have a way of telling what their motivation is, then you make your call based on that.

I want to limit my discussion about racism because in my mind I am telling myself that racism is over, and that the only racism left is the kind that we think exists. In fact, when someone complains about racism, my tendency is to think that they are masking an inferiority complex because when you want to do something, or you want to get something that's based solely on your efforts, and you don't put forth the effort to get the results that you want, coming up with racism is just another excuse in my book. All that being true, I myself fell prey to the excuse demon. You may have heard that excusitis is the failure disease, and I was making an excuse for something that I have believed. If you've paid attention, you noticed that there is some talk about Idris Elba, a well-known and liked actor, portraying James Bond in the next James Bond movie. Now, the talk was really about which black actor was going to play James Bond.

I listened to all the comments and read all the stories about why they thought that Idris Elba would not have been the right person to play James Bond and certainly as a producer, director, or someone in control of making a movie, you want to make sure and get the right person for the right job. As I listened to all this talk, I immediately thought that they just didn't want a black person to play James Bond. I stuffed that in the back of my mind. I didn't say it to anybody, but I kept it there, right back there where I have those other things that I don't like to look at. This morning, I'm looking in my Facebook News Feed. I see that they have chosen an actor to play the first black James Bond. It is not Idris Elba and guess what? The person that they choose is the absolute perfect choice.  He is David Oyelowo.   Now, did I say he was black. Of course he's black. The point of the whole search was to find a black James Bond.

Now, Idris Elba is an accomplished actor. I've seen him in things like "The Wire." I've seen him in "Nelson Mandela," but this guy that they picked to play James Bond is the absolute right guy. He's the same guy that played Martin Luther King in the blockbuster movie entitled, "Selma." He's the same guy that played in Lee Daniel's, "The Butler" or whatever that movie is.  He played in the movie about the son of a butler who worked in the White House. I have to say that I strongly agree with the people who made the decision. This guy would make a far better James Bond than Idris Elba. I mean, he's a classy guy. Mind you, Idris is classy as well, but when they described him as being "too street," they described him right. But, it also speaks of Idris Elba's acting ability. They just didn't believe he could do the role justice, and they may have been right.

This other young man, David Oyelowo,
did a great job playing Martin Luther King. Now, those of you that know who Martin Luther King was, you've got to know that Martin Luther King and James Bond are about as far apart as night and day, but it speaks to this actor's ability to play a part. They must've evaluated him, they did a screen test. They must've spoke to him but whatever it is that they did, they picked him to be the first black James Bond. Now, maybe they thought that whoever the first black James Bond was was some sort of a trailblazer or trendsetter, and he was beating the path for black people in the past or maybe they just simply wanted to make a good movie. Whatever your insecurities are as an extraordinary coach, always be on the lookout to not let them get in the way of you taking care of your clients. Remember our tendency to look good and be right because it is that tendency of looking good and being right that's caused me to miss the point.

I wasted several moments feeling victimized because Idris Elba wasn't chosen to be James Bond. I am the one who took that whole situation and made it about the color of the skin. No longer was I even considering that they were evaluating an actor based on his ability, which in fact, they were. I immediately thought, no matter what the words said. The words clearly said that they were looking for a black actor to play James Bond. For some reason, because they excluded Idris Elba, I wanted to think that they didn't want a black dude to do it, or I wanted to think that they just wanted to have an excuse to not have a black dude because they couldn't find the right one. I tell you, making excuses is an insidious disease. I hope to be cured of excusitis very, very soon. My hope is for you as an extraordinary coach to be excused of excusitis. If you are fortunate enough to have been healed of excusitis, let me tell you this, your clients have not so continue to be an extraordinary coach. Continue to heal your clients of excusitis and move onto that place where you know that you belong.

Now, if this blog has helped you or caused you to have any new thoughts, I would love for you to share it with someone. I end this blog like I end all the blogs, and that is, you have yourself a good time until the next time.

Coaches Corner~Sin

We must forever be mindful of the contradictions and the disparity that exists in our life. It seems that the people who say that there's no pure truth or no pure right and wrong, it seems like they may have a point. If you will look at your own life as an extraordinary coach or just as a regular person, you will see disparity that exists as well.

I bring this up because recently there's been a news story where a woman in Kentucky decided that she was not going to issue a marriage license to a gay couple. Now, certainly she is free to do whatever she wants and whether or not she does her job is between her and her supervisor. However, she cited God's law as the authority for her to not issue gay licenses.

In the world that we live in, certainly we take some persecution for sharing Christ. We take some persecution as being Christians, but since our religion, our relationship with God, dictates that we are forgiving souls, we don't take any of that personal. We just figure that we are being criticized for the glory of God and that's okay with us and that's okay with God.

When you put a spotlight on yourself, and people can see you in a bigger light than which you normally are seen in, you have to expect certain things to come up. I mean, even in the Bible it says, "What's done in the dark will come out in the light." While Christians like myself applaud her efforts for denying to issue a gay license for marriage, well, some of us have a lot more to the story.

The licensing for a wedding is actually a state function and in my world, the Bible says, "Give to Caesar what is due Caesar." If the state is issuing licenses, that doesn't have anything to do with God and I say that because I want you to know that my tendency is to issue the gay licenses, even though I can applaud the statement that she's trying to make because, like her, I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. This issue of a marriage being between a man and a woman is not a black-and-white issue. There are varying degrees of gray running the continuum of yes or no. The politicization of this issue is simply something that is being used by politicians to further their goals of being elected. To put more money into their coffers, to further divide the populace, because you know if you divide the populace, you can sell them anything.

In case you're wondering where this blog is going, I'll make it clear for you now. The point of this blog is not to criticize the woman for what she's doing, but the point of this blog is to have us, as extraordinary coaches, examine our own selves and see if there are paradoxes that exists in our life and do what we can to line up what we say with what we do. To line up what we say and do in one situation with what we say and do in every situation. This woman, now, has gotten herself under the microscope and things about her have come to light that make it clear that she has paradoxes in her life. Don't you be the one whose paradoxes are identified under the scrutiny of the world stage. Get in touch with your paradoxes and your contradictions right now.

Let's talk a little about hers. She says that she's a godly woman. She says that by the authority of God, she's not going to issue these marriage licenses. Now she's famous and she's on television and if that's what she wants, she has achieved her goal, but I suspect that this woman is serious about her assertion that marriage is between a man and a woman. I think that she is sincere in her contradiction, in her opposition, to such a thing. I really do. I think she was equally sincere when she got divorced twice and remarried. Now the Bible talks about what God has put together, let no man put asunder. Is that real or isn't it real? I think that when she gave birth to twins five months after getting divorced from her second husband and is with her first husband, I think that, too, is at odds with what the word of God says.

Those of us that are Christians just reading this blog, remember. Remember the most critical thing in the Bible. There are two critical things in the Bible. The number one critical thing in the Bible is to love your neighbor as yourself. Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all they heart, with all they mind, and with all they soul, and this is the first and great commandment. The second is like unto it which is to love your neighbor as yourself. No place in the Bible does it give us a license to criticize. Not only that, if you have read any of my other blogs, you will know that criticism and complaining do nothing except make you feel worse. Finally, the verse in the Bible that addresses this more than anything else, is to let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Refusing to issue a marriage license to a couple that has been certified by the state to be qualified to marry? Guess what. That is throwing a stone.

I hope I've given you some new things to think about in this blog. I hope I've given you some new conversation pieces in this blog. I certainly hope this blog has helped you and that you pass this blog along to someone you care about. I end this blog just like I end all the rest of them, which is have yourself a good time until the next time.

Coaches Corner~Money

Trust and integrity are siblings when it comes to your coaching relationship. I'm talking about the relationship between you and your client. In the self-employment industry when we collect our own fees, when our clients pay us individually, sometimes the payment is not on time. Many of us have issues around money and issues around time. This blog is speaking about our issues around money.

Let me preface my statement by saying that any issue that you have surrounding money has to do with your worth, your self-concept, how you feel about yourself. When you have a well-integrated self-esteem and self-concept, then you know that you deserve to have money. When you have a great self-concept, your desire is to give rather than to get, and in order for you to give, you have to have money, so you can buy things to give or so that you can give to people.

Money is an exchange in value, and when you are confident that you deliver the appropriate value to your customers or your clients, you have no misgivings about asking to be compensated.

In business, though, from time to time, people don't pay their bills. From time to time, you have to wait before you are paid. If you are a business coach, an extraordinary business coach like I am, then you may have clients who are not able to pay you because their clients didn't pay them.

I started off this blog talking about trust and integrity, and here is where that becomes an issue. You must have the assurance that when your clients have the money to pay you, they are going to pay you. You must never entertain the thought that your clients are simply not paying you because they don't want to or because you don't deserve to be paid. You deserve to be paid and you might find yourself confident enough to ask for your money when it's time for you to be paid.

On the rare occasion that you are not paid, though, well now it's time to see how your trust and integrity quotient really is. Do you trust that your client has the money to pay you? Do you trust that your client will pay you? Presumably, you have a contract in place and certainly those contracts carry some weight, but we don't want to have a relationship with a client that's based solely on a contract. That's why you need to make sure that you resonate with your clients before they even become your clients. You must make sure that you and your clients have an understanding. You never want to get into a wrestling match with a client about money.

Not being clear on money also impacts the kind of coach that you are. Say for instance you're coaching a guy and you see him every week, and a week ago you were due to be paid and you weren't paid. You call the customer up and you are making arrangements for your regularly scheduled coaching session. How do you feel?

Right. You want to ask him where your money is, don't you? You want to ask him why haven't you been paid, don't you? Well, last time you checked with him, he was having issues with his customers paying him and he had accounts receivables and he just wasn't able to pay you.

In this instance you don't need to spend time calling your client every day to ask him when you're going to be paid if you have trust and integrity. You simply wait your turn until he gets paid and then you will be paid.

On the other hand, if you find yourself relying on your clients paying you in order for your life to move forward, in order for your business to move forward, then it's time that you get some more clients.

Yes, trust and integrity is important when it comes to money issues. You must trust that your client is going to pay you, so you don't really have to harass him about being paid, and you must have your regularly scheduled coaching sessions without being concerned about when you're going to get paid. If it turns out that you need to be concerned about when you're going to get paid, then the answer is the same. As an extraordinary coach, get yourself more clients.

It's amazing how many solutions there are in getting yourself more clients. Now, if this blog has helped you in any way, shape, form or fashion, I'd love for you to share it with somebody. I end this blog I end all of my blogs. Until the next time, have a good time.

Coaches Corner~Pastime

When you discover that there is a method to some kind of madness, it is a bit like getting money.  It can also be likened to getting a breath of fresh air.  If you are new to coaching or even if you have coached for a while, you pick up a book like How To Build A Million Dollar Practice and you learn that there is a way to make coaching profitable.  Learning new things can certainly help with our chosen vocation but learning in itself does not produce increase in our bottom line.  When we learn something, one of the natural outcomes is that we want to put it into practice.  Do you remember the erector sets from the early 60’s?  It was a toy that helped you build something like a bridge or an elaborate box after some difficulty with the screws and metal parts.  Figuring out how a certain technology works can also be fun.  Embarking on the coaching track has as its outcome a phenomenal income for those who are able to balance their skill of coaching with running a business.  But the fact is that many coaches end up coaching as a hobby rather than a profession.

When we want to be a coach and we have capital to invest, we may opt for one of the certification programs that are available.  They are heavy on academics and things for one to remember but the true nature of coaching involves some type of methodology which is absent in many of those programs.  The methodology of being a coach is predictable and is the foundation of being an extraordinary coach.  You absolutely cannot be an extraordinary coach unless you make great income being a coach.  Perhaps it does not happen right away but embracing the particular methodology is critical if you ever are going to succeed.  I was working with a potential client recently who told me of the headaches associated with coaching some close friends or family members and I sympathized with her because going to the trouble to think through an individual’s dilemma, thinking about it and maybe even doing some research, and giving them a solution to their problem seems futile when the person acts as if you said and did nothing.  Coaching methodology can eliminate some of that because there is a way to engage clients that all but guarantee they will heed your advice.  And advice is not the ticket anyway but it is more than likely that leading them to their solution would be a better situation.

Coaching as a hobby feels great when it works as most hobbies do.  But after a time even a hobby can be tiring once you decide you want to do it for money.  Many hobbies turn into careers for some but it is never like falling off of a log.  There comes a time when you take the leap and decide it is not a hobby anymore and when that time comes, you had better have a methodology in mind.   If you have a job, that is a 9 to 5, and you want to transition into coaching, then plan on it being a hobby for a time and use it to get a history with people you know but do it with a specific result in mind.  Make sure that you have resources to sustain you because hobbies do not pay you, you pay for them.  Be honest enough with yourself to admit when it is a hobby for you because only you know the truth.  The people benefiting from your coaching don’t care if it is only a hobby and the people who are not benefiting are probably not even noticing that they are being coached.  At this point it is helpful to remind you of several things about coaching that make it a worthwhile career and a worthwhile hobby.  Coaches bring three things to the table and there is not student-teacher relationship in coaching.  They are 1)  An outside objective opinion, 2)  An accountability partner and 3)  New results that have not been present before.  When you take on coaching as a career, keep in mind that a person paying you to do those three things will find you extremely valuable as you deliver those things to them in spades.  And by the time, coaching is no longer a hobby but a beneficial career, you will have seemingly through osmosis, become an extraordinary coach.

If this has helped you, please pass it on to someone else and until the next time, have a good time.

Coaches Corner~Happiness

This blog received surprisingly few views so I am releasing it today under a slightly different heading.  I hope you like it and look forward to your comments.

Today, we want to talk about "happy."  Everyone is familiar with the famous song, if you're happy, clap your hands. It has a real nice, catchy melody to it, and everybody likes singing it. Let's talk a little bit about happy. Let's talk about happy in terms of your being an extraordinary coach. Let's talk about happy in terms of your clients, that you have, who are looking for happiness.

While everyone is talking about happiness, they seldom realize the gravity of the many statements that we make, concerning happiness. For instance, we say, if we find the right person to make us happy, then, we'll have a relationship with that person. If we say that, we find the right job, to make us happy, then, we're going to take that job. Just lately, we are finding out that, as long as you don't hurt anyone, and it makes you happy, then it's okay to do it.

No matter how ridiculous the thing is, or how ridiculous the activity is, the goal is to be happy. When we make happiness our goal, we're also saying that happiness is not our present state. Since many people live their lives pursuing happiness ... And even our constitution, tells us, that we are guaranteed for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness ... The one underlying thing that no one has talked about, up until now, is if you are looking for happiness, then what do you have now?

What do you have now? The corollary is, you're not happy, right now. If you're not happy right now, you're going to do something. People who are happy, do nothing, and that's an inferred reality, and it may even be true. What about you? Are you happy? Do you make your clients happy? Do you think that your clients could be happy without your help? As a coach ... Either being an extraordinary coach, or aspiring to be an extraordinary coach ... Happiness is not something that you must seek. Happiness is something that you must provide.

I recently was on a vacation with my wife in San Diego. We both like the Hotel Del Coronado, or the Hotel Del, which was the setting of the movie My Blue Heaven, with Steve Martin. I was standing there, looking at the store, where they have tablecloths, on sale. The tablecloths were $80, and an apron just like the tablecloth, was $40. The question is, what are you serving on the table, that the tablecloth, costs $80?

That's not the real question. The real question is, who would buy a tablecloth, that costs $80?  I'll tell you who will buy a tablecloth that costs $80. That's one, a person who has $80, and two, that's a person who's going to be happy after they make the purchase.

As I'm standing watching this person purchase a tablecloth for $80, somebody walks by me with an odd looking haircut. A really odd looking haircut. If I can describe it for you, most of the hair was shaved off the head, and there was a braid ... There was just enough hair in the top of the head ... To, braid, the blond hair, coming down the back of the head. I say to my wife, it is interesting how people with "stupid" ideas, or stupid behavior, also have a gene for getting their feelings hurt.

In other words, they also have a gene for not being happy. The implication is, wearing your hair that way, would make you happy, and that's why you do it. But, the minute someone challenges the sensibility of having that haircut that way, you revert back to your normal state. Which is, not happiness. The point I want to make in this blog is, realize that the human state is one, of being unhappy. Realize that the only way that people are going to do something, generally speaking, is if they think, it's going to make them happy.

Finally, the biggest deal is, as an extraordinary coach, you must be your happiest, when you're coaching. You must be your happiest, when you're helping someone. Now mind you, you have to be happy all the time, but you're your happiest, when you're helping somebody out. When the comments start coming about doing something that's going to make you happy. Or living a life that's going to make you happy. Or purchasing something, that's going to make you happy, those of us that are coaches ... Extraordinary coaches ... We need to change that to happier, or happiest, because we have already decided in our life, that we are happy.

The dirty little secret that the people who do things and buy things, and say things, to make themselves happy, is that, the only requirement to being happy, is to decide to be happy. Let's decide to be happy as coaches, and if you don't have a coach, let's decide that getting a coach, is going to make you happy. I'm ending now ... As I like to end all of my blogs ... Have a good time, until next time.