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.