What is Life Coaching?

I get this question a lot, and I think I finally know a good way to answer it. You see, I love analogies. They have always helped me make sense of and then communicate abstract concepts, so I went ahead and thought of one to describe life coaching and how it is different from therapy and counseling.

Let’s pretend that you don’t know how to drive. You can start the car, press the pedal and steer okay, but you don’t know any of the rules of the road. You don’t know which side to drive on, what the signs mean, or what other drivers are doing. At best, you’ll make a lot of people mad and at worst you’ll end up injuring yourself or someone else. This can be compared to someone who needs counseling or therapy. They don’t know society’s rules or simply have difficulty following them. These are people with depression, addictions, schizophrenia, anxiety, eating disorders, etc… A licensed therapist or counselor helps them to cope with and learn whatever rule of the road they are struggling with.

Most of us know how to drive though. We know the rules of the road and how to be safe. We may go over the speed limit some times, but for the most part we’re pretty cautious. But imagine that you know how to drive, and you know all the rules of the road, but you don’t know where you want to go. You’ll just drive around aimlessly. On the road you might see a cool place to stop and take pictures or meet a nice old man at a vegetable stand, but at the end of the day you haven’t made any real progress. You might even just go around in circles never getting anywhere. Even if you know where you want to end up, you might not know how to get there, so you take random roads hoping that eventually you’ll recognize where you want to be. These are the people who need life coaching. They either don’t have any psychological illness, or are already working through it with a licensed professional. They are whole, functional people who just need to figure out what they want and how to get it. Life coaching helps people discover the goals that will get them where they want to be and the proper motivations that will help them achieve those goals.

Lessons Learned from Lou Ferrigno

Sometimes I just need some good old fashioned inspiration, and when I do, I turn to "The Incredible Hulk" (1978).For some reason Lou Ferrigno, the body builder who played the Hulk, has come up in conversation a lot lately, so I decided to start watching the first season. In the first episode Dr. Banner is researching people who have shown incredible strength in times of need (like a mother lifting a car to save her son). The belief that we only use 20% of our strength is the basis of the research, but what really drives Dr. Banner is unlocking the strength he wishes he had when he couldn't save his wife from a deadly car accident. So, he of course doses himself with a million or so gamma units and turns into the Hulk every time he's angry or hurt. Why does this story appeal to me so much?

I guess I would just love to be able to hulk out sometimes. I just want to unlock my strength and just go crazy on  some of my tougher goals. I'd love to do everything I know I can do and everything I don't know I can do and really accomplish something incredible. Right now the only thing standing in my was is the fact that there are 82 episodes of The Incredible Hulk that are at least an hour each. If I'm not careful I could watch it for three hours a day for an entire month, or with the exception of 8 hours of work and 8 hours of sleep, I could watch it nonstop for about 10 days. Hmmm, I think I should read up on overcoming addiction now. Good Day.

Dave Ramsey = My Hero.

The past couple of weeks I’ve been working on new services to offer as a life coach. What I’m most excited about is the idea of online seminars. Currently, I’m working on a 4 week seminar series. It will consist of a weekly webinar along with at home assignments. It will be the perfect opportunity for anyone looking for some information and motivation to start changing their life, but may feel too intimidated talking one-on-one with a life coach. It’s still early on in the development stage, but the plan is to host the first series in September. Stay tuned for updates.

In other news, I am a huge fan of Dave Ramsey. If you’ve never heard of him, you should take a look around http://www.daveramsey.com/. Dave has taught me everything I know about being at peace with financial issues. His main crusade is to get people out of debt. If you’re bogged down and feel like you’ll never pay off student loans, car loans, credit cards, etc… you need to check out http://www.daveramsey.com/. He teaches that getting out of debt is 99% behavior and only 1% math. Sure, consolidating debts to a lower interest rate can help, but the real momentum comes from changing your habits and living within your means. It’s all about delaying the purchase of your dream car until you have the money to pay for it, or working three jobs during the summers to pay for school instead of accepting debt as your only option. He’s also big on building wealth after you get out of debt. If you want to retire a multi-millionaire, you need to check out http://www.daveramsey.com/. Seriously! Do it! I aspire to take his financial counselor course, but I don’t think he would approve of going into debt to do it. So, I’ll be saving my pennies.

Measuring Progress

Spring cleaning can be really frustrating. You pull everything out of closets, cabinets, attics, and even from underneath the bed so you can dust, throw things out, and get organized. After a long, difficult, tiring day of trying to make your home a spotless retreat from the cares of the world, you end up with clothes all over the bedroom floor, pots, pans and melon ballers all over the kitchen, and general disorder everywhere you look. The counterintuitive nature of the activity makes it difficult to stay motivated. You want things clean, but every step you take moves you away from that final goal. Lack of visible progress kills too many goals before their prime. Two different situations may be the culprit. It could be that you are making a lot of progress, but don’t realize it because it’s gradual and you’re just not keeping track, or it could be that you genuinely aren’t making progress and are no closer to your goal than when you started.

With goals like losing weight, saving money, and getting the high score on an online game, it’s easy to measure progress. You can even graph it and do statistical analysis to look for trends in the data. But for goals like finding love, reaching self-actualization, and being a better person, you have to be creative. Try breaking down those goals into smaller and more specific goals. Measuring your progress then becomes less, “today I’m 12.6% in love whereas yesterday I was only 12.4% in love” and more, “I went on dates with five new people, I met a girl I really like, we went on a couple more dates, and now I’d like to have more meaningful activities and conversations to get to know her better.” So instead of a numerical value, you have a list of sequential smaller goals that you can check off along the way. As long as you’re still checking off goals, you’re making progress.

On the other hand, if you’re trying to lose weight and the scale says the diet isn’t working, you’ll rightly ask yourself the question, “Why am I starving myself and not losing weight when I COULD be eating whatever I want… and not losing weight?” Giving up is the easiest response to this question, but a better response is to ask, “What can I do differently to start making real progress toward my goal?” Wile E. Coyote understands this concept well. When he straps an ACME rocket to his back and slips on his roller skates, he’s determined to catch the Roadrunner. When that action results with him smashing into a wall painted to look like the horizon, he doesn’t give up. He grabs an anvil and gets back to work.

Balance

One time I was shaving in the shower. Somehow while I was rubbing my face to see if I missed a spot, I cut the top of my ear with the razor. The first indication of my mishap was seeing the blood on my hand. Seeing the blood caused a slight panic which coincided with getting soap in my eye. I hurriedly reached past the shower curtain for my towel. At this point I slipped, grabbed the shower curtain, pulled the shower curtain down, and fell out of the bath tub and on to the cold tile floor. There I was cold, bruised, bleeding, and eyes stinging, laying on the bathroom floor with a shower curtain on top of me. I should have had better balance.

Balance is essential to leading a whole and happy life. To achieve balance, the first step could be to divide your life into appropriate categories. You could do mind, body, and spirit. You could divide by roles you play such as employee, student, father, son, husband, ballet dancer, etc... You could also divide up by areas of responsibility that are a little more general like, work, school, family, friends, church. Think of as many categories as you need and if you ever feel unbalanced in an area not on the list, add it.

Next, you need to make sure you are dedicating the appropriate time and energy into each of these categories. Unfortunately you can't just divide up your hours awake into equal segments. Balance means making progress in each area and not necessarily devoting equal amounts or time.

The whole point of this is that you don't want to be that guy who has an amazing job and has never met a promotion he couldn't get, but has neglected his family life to the point of extinction. You don't want to be that student who has amazing grades and graduates with a stellar transcript, but has neglected his social skills to the point of never doing well in an interview. You don't want to be that guy who sure is clean shaven, but walks with a limp and has a band aid on his ear.

Cardio

An exercise that will work out your heart without making you out of breath.

1. Write down the name of someone you love. If you’re anything like me, you probably wrote “Liam Neeson”, and THAT’S GREAT, but for this exercise you need the name of someone closer to you. Maybe a friend or family member. If Liam Neeson is a friend or family member, I envy you greatly, and can you get me his autograph?

2. Write down something out of the ordinary that you can do to show that person what they mean to you. When I say “out of the ordinary” I mean something you don’t already do all the time. If you don’t usually hug the person, a hug can be enough. You don’t necessarily have to cook them the world’s largest enchilada, or do anything involving stilts.

3. Do it. Really do it. Don’t just think about it. Get it done.

4. Write your experience. How did you feel? How do you suspect they felt? Is it worth doing again?

I hope that you take the time to follow the above steps. It’s important to write down the name of the person, the action you plan to perform, and the results. It makes the whole experience so much more concrete. Instead of a vague feeling of having done something nice, you’ll have a record of exactly what you did to show your love and how it made everyone feel.

Planners

I’ve been trying to get organized. My biggest need is getting everything out of my head and recorded somewhere I trust. As I’m going through my day I may think, “I should clean out the fridge”. If I don’t write it down, I’ll forget about it until the next time I open the fridge. Unfortunately, when I’m opening the fridge, I’m grabbing something to eat and not looking for something to clean, so it doesn’t get done. My quest for a new system of organization has begun with the search for a planner.

I’m picky about my planners. I want something I can always have with me. It has to be a daily planner with an hourly breakdown. It has to have full pages for Saturday and Sunday. It has to hold up to the abuse of being carried everywhere I go. My first thought was RM Daily Planner. If you served a mission for the LDS church sometime between 2004 and the present, you’re familiar with this type of planner. It meets most of my criteria, but I’d really prefer my hourly breakdown to be a half-hourly breakdown. I want to schedule 30 minutes of yoga, and then 30 minutes of NASCAR without writing them on the same line, because let’s face it, they don’t go together. There was also a lot of wasted space that I wouldn’t really use. It was also a little pricey. So, I tried making my own.

If you served a mission for the LDS church sometime between 19?? and 2004, you’re familiar with the planner I made. Each one holds a week, it folds in three, and has space to track goals and take notes. Oh, and it is made of card stock to give it some durability. In my mission we customized ours a little bit to better fit our needs. They’re compact, customizable, cheap, and just about perfect, but they still tend to fall apart, and since they only hold a week, important information has to be transferred frequently. I really like them, but I’ve opted to just go ahead and get a smart phone.

I’ll always have my phone with me, I won’t need a pen, it will sync with my computer, it will beep at me as a reminder, and I can fit as much information, as far into the future as I want. I think it will revolutionize my life. No more 3-year-old flip phone.

So, the weekend is coming up. Have you planned it yet? You’ve got to take advantage! Have some fun, relax, knock things of your to do list, or take a trip. Monday’s just around the corner. Don’t have any regrets when it comes!

Past, Present, and Future Me

In the first grade I wrote a message to my future children in my journal. It was, “kids, I won’t get mad at you when you dig a big hole in the yard.” I guess I felt like when I turned into an adult I’d forget what it was like to be a kid. At some point I would mistakenly value a nice yard more than a hole to the center of the Earth. I wanted to speak from the past and remind myself what my true values should be. I love reading old journal entries. They’re filled with messages from past versions of me. Missionary Kyle wrote, “Never put your girlfriend before missionary work.” Soon after the mission, when dating was actually an option, I did exactly what I had warned myself about. I can’t say I regret it either. Now I'm married to the love of my life! What happened to missionary Kyle? Where did he go? Does he still exist somewhere in the past? Does he exist somewhere inside of me right now?

It’s a worthwhile exercise to go over some of your outdated values and priorities. Were they abandoned for the right reason? Did you just get caught up in life and forget about them? Which ones deserve a place in your life again? At the same time, what's important to you right now? What do you want to tell future you? Write it down some place where future you will find it.

The Meaning of Life

What is the meaning of life? That’s easy. The meaning of life is a bleu cheese bacon burger; hold the tomato; extra bacon. Now you can stop wondering. I’m glad I could help.

It’s so easy, and I mean SO easy, to go through an entire day/week/month/year without ever living! I’m sure I have gone several years without a single bleu cheese bacon burger. How does that happen?! With schedules filled to capacity we sacrifice living in the name of survival. We need food, clothing, shelter, and iPhones to survive. These are basics, and to get them, you have to WORK. Work and other societal obligations can take over completely if we let them. If you’re not careful you can live for 100 years, but only have REALLY lived for the 10 minutes it took you to eat that bleu cheese bacon burger at a diner in Poughkeepsie. Don’t let this be you!

Ask yourself, when do I feel alive? When am I at my happiest? What makes my life worth living? If your answers are never and nothing, I recommend you see a therapist, but if you have answers, ask yourself if you dedicate enough time to that activity/person/foodstuff. Your life is right now! Don’t sacrifice everything and suffer in hopes that in the future you’ll be able to relax. NEWS FLASH! After a lifetime of not relaxing, you’ll have no idea how to enjoy it when the time comes…if it comes.

For this week, try taking a moment every night to write down what you did to live that day. What was the thing that made all the stress worth it? If you find this to be a difficult task, it's time for some self-reflection.

Don't Let Your Goals Hold You Back

Let’s face it. We don’t know our own potential. We form an idea based on what we’ve done in the past, what people we know have done, and what others tell us we can do; however, our potential isn’t really based on the past, other people’s accomplishments, or someone else’s guess. What DOES determine our potential? I don’t know, probably the position of Venus when you were born or whether or not you're a middle child. The point is that goal setting is guesswork. We do our best to set the bar at a level that seems both challenging and attainable, but we don’t know where that is until we try. 

Stretching Goals
If a goal doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t belong on your list of goals. It belongs on your to do list. Goals should stretch you and foster growth. It may be tempting to set your expectations low to ensure success; however, is it really success? What if you were capable of so much more? How can you know? That’s why it’s so important to set goals at what you believe to be your maximum capability or even just beyond your maximum capability. These are stretching goals that will ensure you are reaching your true potential.

Limiting Goals
When we underestimate ourselves, it is possible to set goals that can actually limit us. Let’s say you organize an event to raise money for charity and set the goal at $5,000. You expect it to take 4 hours to reach the goal, but it only takes one hour. What do you do now? Do you end the event early and go home? Of course not. You continue to work hard and try for $20,000. It seems obvious, but in many areas of our lives we quit when we’ve reached our goal and never know what we could have done. This is where stepping up you goals comes into play.

Step up Your Goals
Stepping up your goals can be planned, or spontaneous. It's taking what you would normally do, or what you plan to do and making it bigger, better, more challenging, and more rewarding. One way to step it up is to take a limiting goal and turn it into a stretching goal while you’re planning. Often times; however, we don’t even realize we’ve set a limiting goal. In these cases, it’s important to evaluate your performance while working towards a previously set goal. Ask yourself, “Is this too easy? Should I be working harder? Could I do more?” If the answer is yes, don’t let your goal limit you. Step it up and show that goal who’s the boss. And I don’t mean Tony Danza. Never settle for just checking that goal off your list. Destroy it. Annihilate it.

Accountability

Have you ever been really excited about a goal only to forget about it a week later? Maybe a goal to eat healthier was quickly replaced with a goal to get as many double chocolate chip cookies in your mouth as humanly possible. Or maybe you were really excited to save money and finally get out of debt, but the opportunity to own every episode of Seinfeld on Blu-ray made you reevaluate your priorities. Accountability is one of the keys to keeping this from happening and sticking to goals.

Be Accountable to Yourself
First of all we need to be accountable to ourselves. We need to have a clear and well defined goal free from loopholes or vague interpretations. Then we need to commit to that goal whole heartedly. While working towards a goal, recognize justification and stop it in its tracks.

“I’ve had a rough day, so I deserve a fistful of pepperoni and a two liter of soda.”
“I really want it and it’s on sale, so I’m really saving $50 and not spending $200”

Justification will fool you into trading what you want in the long run for what you want in the moment. When the immediate satisfaction wears off, you’ll be left with regret (except for the example of owning all the seasons of Seinfeld on Blu-ray; you’ll never regret that).

Be Accountable to Others
For those of us who aren’t as strong willed as we’d like to be, it’s important to tell other people what our goals are and ask them to hold us accountable. Friends and family can help remind you of your goals and help you escape moments of temptation. A life coach can check up with you and help you remember your motivations. Knowing that other people will know if we fail can push us back on track.

Be Accountable to God
For those goals that are really important and really difficult, being accountable to God is a great help. Pray regularly, and when you do, tell your Heavenly Father what you’re doing to be a better person. Be specific, and ask for His help. The next time you pray, give a report and give thanks. When temptation comes allow yourself to think, “When I pray tonight, do I want to be thanking the Lord for the strength he gave me to succeed or do I want to be explaining why I faltered?” You can lie to your friends and you can even lie to yourself, but you can’t lie to God.

If you mess up, that’s okay. It’s usually not the end of the world. Just recognize your mistake, find out what went wrong, and recommit to do better. Keeping all this in mind, I feel like I should let everyone know what my goal is with this blog. I want to have a new post every Friday. Please hold me accountable. If you check my blog on a Saturday and there isn’t a new post, I want to hear about it. Thanks for your help.