Coaches Corner~Duplicity

What the duplicitous person does not know or understand is that everybody is not like them. We all tend to believe that the way that we are is normal and we can only approach things from that point of view. Being a person to even speak negative of another person in and of itself is not all that rewarding, but when you speak negative of a person when you're not with them and not when you're with them, you characterize yourself as duplicitous. Some of the people reading this blog are not Americans, rather, English is not their first language. So to make it simple for you, duplicitous is another way of saying "two-faced".

Why I am doing a blog about two-face people on a blog that's geared for extraordinary coaches? I'll tell you. Recently, over the last several weeks or months or what have you, I have been met with several people telling me about other people who they consider two-faced. When the conversation begins and they mention the fact that they don't like people who are two-faced, I immediately tell them what my mother told me as a boy. Any dog that will bring a bone will take a bone. This clues the person in, in my estimation, that they shouldn't tell me who the two-faced person is because by doing so they will characterize themselves as some dog who is bringing a bone. 100 percent of the time they have gotten the message and not bothered to tell me who they think is two faced.

Not all of the people I'm associated with share with me that they don't like two faced people, but only some of them and ... I don't know who you are.

Of the individuals who complain about two-faced people, we all seem to have a friend in common and I know who the friend is but I don't really mind who the friend is because I'm going to love them. I love everybody. I am a forgiving person and I seek the higher plane in most of my life's activities. But what about you? How do you handle it when you're faced with a situation where someone is saying bad things about you behind your back and good things about you to your face?

As an extraordinary coach, you must be prepared for such an outcome should it occur and that is what this blog is about today. Here is how it is. Always keep in mind the dog bringing a bone story that I just shared with you. Also, make sure that you don't say anything about people who are two-faced because then you become a two-faced person yourself. Let's examine the motives of why people are duplicitous in the first place.

I had a Facebook post recently talking about the reason that people might not be nice is because of fear. I stand by that because all of us, I think, naturally are nice people. The only time that we are not nice is when we are in fear or when we are afraid to be nice. We might be fearful that being nice to somebody might make us look bad, and that gets into another set of human urges that we have to deal with. The urge concerning looking good and being right plagues us all.

The person that's saying something bad about another person to you, actually likes you. They may even like the other person as well, but they lack the skills of communication that allows them to have a place for both people. They think that by identifying someone else's shortcoming to you that they are elevating you to some degree. It's really not what they think of the other person, it's really not what they're saying to you that I want to talk about, it is what is it doing to you? What effect does it have on you to hear criticism of others? How do you respond when you hear criticism of others?

As an extraordinary coach and someone who may be training business people, you've got to rise above it all and not allow it to impact you. Certainly it might hurt, but embrace certain platitudes like: how you feel about me is none of my business, because it really isn't. You are being baited to not love people.

The biggest enemy of personal growth is self-gratification. The biggest growth of you being all you can be is immediate gratification. And boy, you know our ears perk up when we hear gossip. I'm reminded of a movie that I saw when I had my first experience with the actress, Olympia Dukakis. The name of the movie was "Steel Magnolias". In one scene of the movie, in her New Orleans, Louisiana accent, she says something along the lines of: ‘Tf you don't have something good to say about somebody, come sit by me.’ I find that extremely humorous because most of us are like that. We want to hear the dirt. We want to hear all the bad stuff, but as an extraordinary coach, we've got to be present to the fact that what we think about, we bring about. We have to understand that it is not what goes into our mouth that defiles us but what comes out of our mouth that defiles us. So we cannot criticize people for being two-faced, we cannot criticize people for being duplicitous, otherwise we create the greatest sin of them all, we defile ourselves.

We must be mindful of the fact that walking in love means that you must suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. It means that you cannot allow anything to take you out of your love walk because you are most effective when you are in your love walk and you want to be most effective. I'm not saying that you need to be super-human, although I could be super-human. What I am saying is that any time you consciously make a decision to talk about someone or consciously make a decision to respond to hurt in a negative way, then you are allowing the enemy to get inside your head. Once he gets inside there, he'll take up root and he'll stay there forever.

This blog is about duplicity. Duplicity runs rampant in your network. It runs rampant in your environment. You must not let it touch you. When someone tells you another person has been two faced, then you take the high road and remind them that any dog that brings a bone will take a bone. And you feel not hurt about this, and you must find a way to explain it away. People think I'm such a great guy because I forgive easily. People think I'm such a great guy because I give people excuses and make excuses for their behavior even when it's bad behavior. It's not that I'm such a great guy, it's that I'm a selfish guy and I know the value of my inner life. I know how important it is for me to control my thoughts. I know how important it is to forgive. I know that the life that I live can only be enhanced by the ultimate commandment, which is to walk in love. I'm not that great of a guy. I have inner urges that I have to deal with. I just simply deal with them. When I forgive you for hurting me it's not that I love you, it's that I love me. When I ignore the fact that people say bad things about me to my face ... When I ignore that people say good things to me to my face and bad things about me to my back, oh yes, I deal with it internally. But nobody is under any obligation to treat me good. Mind you, the smart people will, not because they like me but because they like them, just like I treat people good because I like me. Your biggest takeaway from this blog is, don't become a victim of the same malady that produces two-faced people by becoming two-faced yourself. If you find yourself completely adverse to two-faced people or you find yourself reacting negatively to two-faced people, then examine yourself. What I have found is, the people I don't get along with or the people I have a problem with, the main reason I have a problem with them is because they exhibit a negative characteristic much like the one that I have. Only, I'm not present to mine, I am present to theirs.

That's it for today's blog, I certainly hope it has helped you. If it has helped you, please pass it on to someone you know, maybe someone two-faced. If not, well embrace it and read it again and again and again. I end this blog like I enjoy ending all of my blogs, and I say to you to have yourself a good time until the next time.

Coaches Corner~Uncle Tom

With the rise of the numbers of black people who ascribe to the Republican way of thinking, has also come the criticism of being an Uncle Tom. I looked up Uncle Tom on the Internet, and it is defined as a black person who is overly subservient to white people in general. Being an Uncle Tom was a coping mechanism used in the old days to accomplish selfish purposes. In the old days when blacks were slaves and to be black was in itself a problem, the black people who did what they could in order to have a better experience in life were called Uncle Toms, and that included being subservient to white people. At the time, the overwhelming majority of white people were of a certain ilk, and society in general had no use for a black person. This, in my view, was a very terrible time in American history.
   
With the adoption of civil rights laws and the elimination of laws deferring to white people in cases involving blacks, that is all gone by the wayside now. The thing that's left now is the psychological position by many black people that there is a white power structure. The belief that black people as a group are monolithic and all think the same way is actually a detriment to the progress of society in general and many black people specifically. The difficulty now is that so many people are mired in the old way of thinking that a few of those people who are not marred in that way of thinking are being criticized by other black people.
   
In fact, in looking up the definition of Uncle Tom, I find that Uncle Tom is a criticism that's heaved on blacks by other blacks. Uncle Tom was used to describe black people who did things that was subservient to white people so they can have a better personal experience, and in a way it was simply a choice that they made to keep themselves alive. Black people, as an oppressed group at that time,  attributed certain characteristics to being black and everybody attributed the less than flattering characteristic to being black. Those days are gone.
   
In the old days, a black person having a disagreement with a white person was automatically wrong. A black person looking for a job competing with a white person automatically lost. A black person who was a policeman even was thought of as less than the criminal who was a white person. Those, once again, were terrible times in American history. As an extraordinary coach, it is critical that you are present to what affect this has on your clients. The principle that even overrides the idea of being an Uncle Tom is a principle that everyone suffers from and that is that we get up each and every morning of every single day finding ways to “look good and be right.”
   
Granted, the black person who is not called an Uncle Tom is also looking for a reason to look good and be right. When he runs across a black person, that doesn't see things the way that he see things. He then has to find some explanation. No one wants to be a critic and no one wants to be thought of as negative, but this is overridden by our desire to look good and be right. Hence, we criticize the black person that doesn't think like we do. It seems, in this piece, that I go back and forth between we and they, and that is logic because I happen to be a black person. I happen to be a black person who may be considered an Uncle Tom by some because I don't buy in to the narrative that overcomes the majority of black people, but it is not my job to be a critic.
   
I only seek to enlighten, and the reason that this is important is that in order for us as a society to grow, we must get away from these ways, I think, that we use to divide one another. Granted, the black community as it was years ago no longer exists, and I sometimes wonder who they're talking about when they talk about the black community. I am not alone in my assessment of this, and you may have clients that feel the same way that I do about this and if you don't feel the way that your client feels about this, one of two things will occur. You will not have this person as a client because you don't resonate with this person, or you will find yourself looking good and being right by trying to straighten this person out in their misguided direction.
   
It doesn't look like the racism that people complain about will ever go away, and if it doesn't look like that it will ever go away is largely because of peoples’ unwillingness to accept responsibility for the difficulties in their life. As an extraordinary coach, part of what you do is you have people accept responsibility for their life. You, as an extraordinary coach, have to accept responsibility for your life too and if you truly want to be an extraordinary coach, there's no place in your life or in your business for anyone considering themselves a victim.
   
If this racism, if these complaints of racism is to go away, it will be the job of the extraordinary coach to usher it out, and the extraordinary coach approaches this problem by asking just the right questions. Questions like what's working, what's not working, what's next and what's missing. Asking those questions will force people to dig deep within themselves to find out what is the true source of their discomfort, what is the true source of their lack of success. When someone examines themselves and look exactly at their motives, they will not come to the conclusion that it results from anything outside of them. All in all, situations result from how we see the world. Can you imagine deciding that there's something on this earth that you don't like and that you're going to leave the earth as a result of it? I'm sure that doesn't make sense.
   
I started out this blog talking about Uncle Tom, and the reason that I started about Uncle Tom is a good one. Uncle Tom no longer exists primarily because the white power structure no longer exists. There are people who can make a case for anything just like I'm making the case for this, and the people who make a case for the existence of the white power structure are simply black people who are trying to look good and be right in their assessment of why their life isn't working the way that they wanted to work.
   
Since there's no white power structure, there's no uncle Toms, and use of the epithet Uncle Tom is simply vitriol in disguise. People who use epithets and other forms of criticism are missing the point that when you criticize someone, no one goes "Oh, I see. I didn't know that I was being an Uncle Tom. Let me stop right now and do what you want." Because you see, that never happens. What you resist, persists and whenever you criticize someone either being an Uncle Tom or anything else that you can think of, the most likely thing that they're going to do is defend themselves. Those of you criticizing some black folks of being Uncle Tom, I encourage you to evaluate that and see how that has worked.
   
Now, if you simply want to spew vitriol, then you're going to be successful whenever you call somebody an Uncle Tom, but if you truly want to improve your world, improve our world and help society move in a positive direction, you will face the fact that your assessment of somebody being an Uncle Tom is simply anger and vitriol heaved upon them by you, so I hope that one of you who's reading this blog is enlightened to a degree. Because like me, I'm sure you are looking for love when you're looking to give love and receive love, and you don't get love in any way by criticizing people, especially calling somebody an Uncle Tom. Uncle Tom, like the N-word has no place in civilized society. When someone behaves in a manner unlike the way that you would behave, let's find a different way to describe it and let's find a different way to assess it, and criticism is not the way.
   
Now, if this blog has helped you, please by all means share with someone, and I end this blog like I love to end all of my blogs which is for you to have a good time until the next time.

Coaches Corner~Resistance

                                                      

                          

Becoming a business coach has literally changed my life. Of all the things I have done in my life, and of all the careers I have undertaken, becoming a business coach has been the most profitable in more than monetary ways. It has taught me that no one is immune to the looking good, being right syndrome, which can be sometimes very destructive. We are also victims of our own drugs, for lack of a better term. The worst thing that a pusher can do is to use his own drugs, because he uses up his profits. That makes him a poor business man.
   
It may be a crass example, but it is indicative of what I want to share with you in this blog today. As an extraordinary coach, you are not only responsible to produce extraordinary behavior, you are responsible to demonstrate extraordinary behavior in that you to need to be extraordinary. By putting yourself under the pressure to become extraordinary, you do a couple things. You are not allowed to indulge in the snap judgments that average people make a habit of doing. You are not allowed to develop resistance when someone is saying something to you that fails only in the fact that you didn't think of yourself.
   
In an odd sort of a way, we defend our ideas to the death no matter how silly they are just because they are our ideas. Oftentimes when people make suggestions to us, we resist these suggestions no matter how much sense they make. That's because we're not responding to the suggestion or the amount of sense that it makes. We are responding to the fact that someone other than us said it. In fact, it is been my belief for a long time that we are not really interested in hearing what someone else has to say. We just want to say what we have on our minds, and then we're ready to move on to the next opportunity to say something.
   
Just recently, on one day before I was to do this workshop, I was all set to go, so I thought. I had my idea how to start the workshop. I had the material I was going to present, and I had decided it was going to be a great workshop. Little did I know that even though I had decided it was going to be a great workshop, I had just begun to do the actual planning of the workshop. Less than 24 hours before the workshop is to take place, I call my business partner and I'm chatting with my business partner. She makes her first suggestion to me.
   
I could feel the ire within me rising up. I could feel the resistance rising up, because I'm familiar with it. I'm over 60 years old, right?  I also am smart enough to know that it's rising up because someone else is saying it, not because the ideas don't make sense. Now ultimately the things I do in my life benefit me or I would be an insane person, which is also true about you. On the way to me getting benefit is me helping someone else. By delivering a whizzbang of a workshop that everyone would be excited about, ultimately I win. In between me and my victory are the people sitting in the room.
   
My business partner was very instrumental in the people in the room getting a good workshop that day. After speaking to my business partner for a short while, I revamped my entire workshop. Now mind you, that's not to say that I didn't give any time to preparation, because I did. What it is to say is that she brought some things to my mind that was in my mind lying dormant that I hadn't thought of. As a result, it woke me up to the greatness that I could deliver my attendees.
   
As an extraordinary coach, always be open to hearing new things. You don't have to adopt them. You're not going to be seduced into doing something you don't want to do, so make it a habit to listen rather than go with your first mind and resist. You must realize that anything that comes to you, it's coming to you because you brought it. If you don't like it or you don't feel warm towards it, it's not that what's coming to you is wrong. Don't make the mistake of thinking that what's coming to you is someone else's attempt at thwarting your progress. You need to change your mind so that what's coming to you benefits you. Changing your mind is something that you can do. You simply decide to do so.
   
When the people are in divorce battles and they have complications and unable to come to agreements with the other side of the divorce, they could be fighting for days. They can have lots of legitimate reasons where they can't agree. But then they go to court and the judge makes a decision, and both people say okay. Both people just simply live with what the judge says, even though the judge knows neither of them. The fact that you can simply decide to do something, you can simply decide not to resist. As far as I'm concerned, that is a no-brainer.
   
I hope this blog has helped you, and if you know someone that is a professional resister, go ahead and help them by turning them on to this blog. I end this blog like I love to end all of my blogs, by inviting you to have a good time until the next time.

Coaches Corner~Shootings

With the recent violence in Oregon I am prompted to write this blog on self-management. As you know, I'm a big proponent of "what you think about, you bring about" and I'm also a big proponent of living on the inside. In these troubled times in which we live our only defense is a great inner life. Certainly, we can be angry about the fact that innocent people die. We can also feel the pain of the loved ones left without those innocent people dying but we cannot continually feel worse and worse and worse. With each malady that occurs we find a deeper degree of suffering, a deeper degree of pain.

The usual reaction that you hear when a mass killing occurs is someone feeling sorry for the victims and their families, someone saying something along the lines of, "My heart aches for them," someone saying something like, "I am saddened." All of these are normal reactions in a sense, however, maybe they aren't. As a Christian I believe that when I die I go to heaven. I totally buy into the many verses of the Bible that I memorized easily and one of them said, "To be absent from here is to be present with the Lord."

Reasonable people will find themselves walking around in fear and anger that lead to depression on a regular basis when they pay attention to what's happening in the news. I noticed that when something like this happens I spend more time watching the news than I usually do. While watching the news and hearing the story regurgitated time and time again, it doesn't do me any good. It doesn't do the people any good who are telling the story except for the fact that sponsors buy airtime. What to do?

What to do is recommit your spiritual life, come to Lord Jesus in a greater and in a closer way. You have to realize that there are many thing that you have control over and what someone else does to someone else is not one of those things. You must decide to live with the criticism that you don't care when things like this happen. Realize that people who do care are experiencing more pain than you.

Now certainly you're not going to excuse what the person does but you have to ramp up your forgiveness muscle. If you do not forgive the person who commits these atrocities, what do you do to your own heart? To walk around carrying the pain of these unfortunate situations do nothing more than attract the same sort of situations into your life. You have to realize, you have to understand and totally buy into the fact that it is what is inside of you that's drawing the outside of you towards you.

I don't say to excuse the madness but what do you accomplish by being angry about it? What do you accomplish by being hurt about it? The only thing that my mind tells me that you accomplish is that you have something in common with millions of other Americans. Millions of other people in the world are saddened by these atrocities and you would just be another one. How does it empower you to be hurt by all of this? What does it do for you to commiserate with the victims?

I submit that it doesn't do that much. Mine is not a popular position. I know that, because people say to me often, "What? Don't you care?" Or something like, "Well, you don't care. Well, then there's something wrong with you." I live with those things. I can tell you this, "When you continue to meditate on the bad you are going to see more of it. If you meditate on the good things that there are in life, you will see more of that." There are people who espouse reality and who say that, "Well, you have to live in the real world."

I submit to you that there is no real world except the one that you imagine yourself. This world that we live in is a mirage. It's a controversial stance but no amount of gun control, no relaxing of gun control is going to affect the heart of a human being. If we could tell what people are going to do before they do it then we could do something about what we are experiencing but we can't do that.

The only thing that we can do is let law enforcement do their job and we do our job. As human beings, the members of law enforcement have the same job that we do in a sense, because we are all called to forgive. We have laws that we must obey and enacting more laws when people don't already obey the laws that exists, simply pretend that we're doing something when we're not. Take heart, the people who have died no longer have the struggle that you have. I don't really know what struggle they do have but I know that when I die I'm going to be with the Lord.

Buck up, get yourself steeled for the fight. Do what they say in the movie War Room, get you a prayer closet and make prayer a regular part of your day. Pray for them, especially you should love them that hurt you and strengthen your love muscle, because really and truly, that's the only choice you've got. You are never going to find a proper place to put your anger, you would just leave it in angry place. You will never find a proper place to put your love either but living in a love place is a much more pleasant existence than living in an angry place.

Hey, share this blog with someone you know. Help someone you know get over the pain and misery of death and destruction. I end this blog like I end all of my blogs, you do me a favor and have a good time, until the next time.

Coaches Corner~Over-Controlling

You can never control the world. In a sense you can't control the world because you can't control your reaction to whatever stimulus comes your way. This morning blog is about how to actually control your life. You hear all the time that "you can if you think you can."  You probably hear people say that what you "think about you bring about." People who don't get the outcomes in their life that they want, deny that they get what they think about but it is true despite their feelings.

In my world, it is undeniable that you do in fact get what you think about. I'm going to share two incidents occurring in my life recently where people get outcomes that they did not want because they were indeed thinking about it and yet they felt victimized by it.

The first outcome is a serious issue. I'm working with a young man who's using a camera doing some work for me. Unfortunately, his camera sustained some damage. I, too, have cameras so I know how nerve-racking it can be when your camera sustains damage. There's two ways to react to that. You can react in the sky is falling mentality. You can react in the "something just happened" and "I need to take care of it" frame of mind. Or you can simply file an insurance claim which is the best case scenario. But the absolute worst case scenario is to get an attitude about it or to be angry about it. We all know that you don't want that to happen, you don't want to have equipment breaking, but sometimes it happens.

Now once your equipment is broken you already have suffered an insult. It is absolutely ill-advised to then be angry about it. In that case you are adding insult to injury. Believe it or not you expected that to happen to you. Your temperament is that bad things happen to you. You tend to feel victimized when things happen to you. If you didn't then you wouldn't be angry, because in my world anger is the most basic form of over controlling tendencies. You use your anger to cause other people to do what you want. What you don't realize when you're getting angry is that no one feels the anger but you, so all the destructive nature of anger is experienced by you. I'm not suggesting that everyone deals with calamity the way that I do, but certainly it makes sense not to get angry when you’ve suffered an insult, particularly an insult that you didn't make happen yourself. That's the first instance.

In another instance I was on the phone, making telephone calls, making telephone calls based on information that is available publicly. I was offering a young lady my services, services that she obviously need, based on where I found her personal information. Unfortunately she did not want any service. She angrily told me that she will never use my company and that she's on a do not call list and I should not bother her and “Good bye,” was her response.

Clearly she was angry about what happened. Can you imagine you're in the world and you get angry when people call you? People are going to be calling you for the rest of your life. People are going to be talking to you for the rest of your life. The people that call you do not necessarily consult the do not call registry. I understand the existence of the do not call registry, and some people actually consult a do not call registry before they make phone calls. I'm not one of them. I'm not aware of any requirement for me to check the do not call registry before I make telephone calls.

Solicitation is how business is done in this world. If you are going to get angry when people call you on your telephone, then you are really victimizing yourself. The way that we think of things is divided into two categories. One, we think of them as a victor, or two, we think of them as a victim. When we have outcomes that we want we're excited about it. When we have outcomes that we don't want we can feel victimized or we can take control of it.

I once read a book called "The 10X Rule," where the author says that we ought to take control of everything in our lives. Of course we can’t take control of everything in our life, but we can certainly think about everything in our life that happens as though we were in control. He said that even if we got hit from behind in another car, that we should take control over that too, and if there's any blame to be meted then we should take the blame because after all we should be good enough business people that we shouldn't have to leave our house anyway. Customers should be coming to us.

As you go through your job, as you become an extraordinary coach, notice the clients that you are helping. Some of the clients that you are helping see themselves as victors and some of them see themselves as victims. You want to develop victors. When you have a client that sees themselves as a victim, you have to negotiate a narrow ridge at that time because people who are victims don't want to be victims. They are more than likely trying to connect with another human being by being a victim. Since they don't want to be a victim and their behavior is as though they are victims, what can you actually do to help them? The most that you can do is you could listen to them. The best that you can do is to not respond to them.

People who are controlling, people who behave aggressively, those people are over controlling people. They use their anger to try to control others. Do not let them control you. Do not respond to their anger. As they go through the motions indicating that they are angry, you simply remain nonplussed as I say. You just look them in the face and listen to their concern. Be sensitive but don't respond to their anger, because if you do you keep them in bondage much longer than they need to be in bondage. Nobody wants to do that.

If this has helped you in any way, shape, form, or fashion I urge you to pass this onto someone that you know, and be sensible as you do so, because most of the people that are really controlling and aggressive, they have a good reason to be that way in their own mind. Use wisdom as you share. But I end this blog as I end all the rest of them, have yourself a good time until the next time.

Coaches Corner~Rebellion

I just recently heard that John Boehner, I guess he's the Republican Speaker of the House, has retired. I'm driving and listening to the radio, and they have a poll asking the question if you're sad that he's retired. Over a whopping 79% of the people who responded said they are not sad that he is leaving. I got to thinking about that, and how could a person be disapproved of by 79% of the people that he is leading? I would probably say a higher percentage than that of people would not want to do his job.

It occurs to me as an extraordinary, coach, I find myself also in a leadership position. As a leader, I get, that many people who are being led, just simply don't want to follow. They simply don't want to behave. This phenomenon started many, many years ago, I suppose, when they were children. The breakdown of society, and I know this is a leap here, had begun to take place since parents stopped being parents. When children stopped obeying their parents, all bets were off.

First, they didn't want to do what their mother said to do. Then they didn't want to do what their father said to do. After that, they wanted to rebel against their teachers, then followed shortly thereafter, by the policeman, who is a leader of sorts because he is supposed to maintain order in society.

Then came this notion that it's very American to complain. The people that say it's very American to complain often cite our history. What they don't realize is that we all tend to be self serving, and the rules we live by, basically, they favor us. The reason that we as a country said that it was okay to rebel, it was okay to question everything, is that during that time, that's what we were doing! We were looking for our independence from England.

Now, we're claiming some sort of superiority, or giving merit to the fact that we are a nation where you are free to protest and free to rebel. Well you are also free to obey the law. You are also free to do what the majority wants you to do. You are also free to decide to comply.

Time out for everyone being rebellious. Time out for everyone finding a reason to disapprove of someone in leadership position. Now I realize, by writing this blog, I too am complaining of sorts, but I have a justification for my complaint. Now that I think about it, perhaps the people who are complaining also think that they have a justification for theirs.

At the end of the day, there is no justification for complaining. You may change things; you may do something different. You may have a preference for things to be other than what they are, but when you complain about things, you do no one any good. You don't even do yourself any good, because complaining about things just put you in a bad mood and release toxins into your bloodstream.

Now, as an extraordinary coach, you're going to be called upon sometime to deliver bad news to your clients, and I have such a client right now. My client hired me for 3 main things, and one of those things was to give my outside, objective opinion. My outside objective opinion right now is that he is wasting his money by paying me to coach him. If he's not going to do what I suggest as his coach, then he may as well keep his money in his pocket.

I don't want clients that's going to complain about me. I want clients that's going to say I am doing a phenomenal job. I want clients to say that they have had so much improvement after working with me that they can't count the number of instances. You may ask what does me being an extraordinary coach with a client that's not behaving has to do with John Boehner stepping down, and no one approving of him staying in the first place.

I'll say to you that you must pay attention that the culture is changing, so much so that the industry of self help really has an opportunity right now. The industry of self help is on the up and the up, because people need to help themselves. If you are going to rely on a leader, it just doesn't make any sense to complain about the leader.

I believe that history has shown that if there is a leader, people are going to complain about them. No matter who the president of the United States is, there are people complaining about him. The heck of it is, the people that's complaining about him wonder why everybody else is not complaining about him. The people that's not complaining about him, wonder why the people who are complaining are actually complaining.

As we come to the end of this blog, understand that the point of this blog is self empowerment. I am always looking for ways to empower you as an extraordinary coach, so that you can empower your clients as good clients. The little secret that everyone avoids, is that you are responsible for your life. You are responsible for your thoughts. You are responsible for whether or not you complain.

Once you cast your vote, or you have had a say in a certain result, if the result is not to your liking then bless God, wait until the next time you get to make another choice and make a better one. Until then, fight the urge to complain. Fight the urge to be negative, because those things simply deposit poison into your system, which doesn't help you much.   And no matter how much you disapprove of a specific leader, someone else loves them.

Now if this block has helped you to open your eyes in any way, I would love for you to share it with someone that you know or care about. I end this blog like I end all of my blogs, with an admonition for you to have yourself a good time until the next time.

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.