Unlike therapy, life coaching is not focused on reprocessing past experiences or discovering why you have the challenges you do. Life coaching looks at the present moment, as Eckhart Tolle would say, “The Now”. And where you want to go. Coaching is about achieving tangible/measurable results. We’re less likely to focus on the why but more on the what, when, and how?

Life coaching is about helping *you* to take greater responsibility for the results you get in your life. One of my mentors was fond of pointing out, “If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.” It’s not so much about figuring out the right thing to do, it’s about changing habits, experimenting with your choices, and seeing what gets the best results. It is a powerful thing recognizing that you have an expanded amount of choices in your life. We do and say so many things on autopilot. But by getting a little more conscious and embracing your free will, you can make amazing positive changes.

It all starts by being open to possibilities. By being open to the possibility that  how things have been can be otherwise. Being open to the possibility that you have what it takes to change your world.

I’ll start with the discernment piece. How do I know that this overwhelming need to slow down and “veg” is a need and not a procrastination reaction? (Yes, I believe procrastination can actually be reactivity, but I will have to consider this brand new thought at a later date!) My first clue was how my body took the lead. I felt tired like when I am starting to get sick and I had a slight sore throat. I could have just pushed through it all despite these minor symptoms, but I wanted to make sure I didn’t get sick. That helped me give myself permission to rest.

Another important factor that allowed me to determine that a day or two of rest was appropriate was that I had just completed several higher stress and fear-inducing activities including giving my first 3rd Thursday Free Workshop. (It went great!) If I were *about* to do something scary, I would have guessed that my tiredness was me trying to talk myself out of putting myself in an uncomfortable situation. Having just completed something scary, I was a lot less skeptical of my potential motives.

The third thing that freed me up to go with being a coach barnacle was that it just *felt* right on a deep level. That is, it actually felt aligned with my purpose to help others and my goals of creating a succcessful and sustainable coaching business. I needed literally to recharge my batteries. Face it, dealing with people takes a lot of energy. Doing with great attention, focus, and love takes even more! I needed a rest in order to be ready for new challenges.

And, having taken two restful days, I *am* ready. I am so grateful that I didn’t go into judgement with myself and beat myself up for being lazy. (I am sure a better opportunity for that will lurk behind a future door.) Also, I did not decide that I was getting depressed which is another interpretation I like to make. Then I end up feeling bad about being depressed which actually makes me depressed. This low energy period had been a lot shorter that ones that I have experienced in the past. I have been really very amazed at how enjoyable it is to listen to my body’s needs and respond as though I love and trust myself. Yes, sometimes I procrastinate, but this time I didn’t put off taking care of myself!

Actually, I conducted a little experiment on myself many years ago. My life took a new turn in 2000 when I was laid off from my outside sales manager position a few weeks before my first son was born. Being a single mom, I decided to take over my therapist father’s insurance billing duties to earn some extra money. I needed to get claims in on a regular time schedule in order for my father to get paid. What I noticed was that I would get increasingly depressed, anxious, and sick feeling as the due date approached. By the time I took action, I was irritable and agitated. Upon task completion (some of you are saying, “What’s that?”), I felt relief. I almost felt ecstatic, in fact. Celebration time!

I had never been able to do any project with a slow and steady pace or before what I perceived to be The Last Minute. (It really sucks when you misunderestimate when the last minute actually is! We have a term for that in my business; it’s called being totally screwed!) My brain seems to need the added (ADHDed?) adrenaline of The Last Minute to muster the focus to get going. But the idea of conducting research on myself was a compelling carrot. This is what I did…

I made the conscious decision to start the insurance billing well before what I perceived to be The Last Minute and see what would happen. That’s it! Curiousity won out over procrastination. You won’t believe what happened. Well, first, you won’t believe that I actually got the billing done early! Here’s the strange part: I *still* got anxious at the last minute. And even though the project was complete, I did *not* feel relieved. Why? Perhaps because I hadn’t exerted all that fight or flight energy to get the task done? Beer always tastes better after a day of hard work. I did not have a day of hard work from which to enjoy relief.

In conclusion, I have learned to be skeptical of my interpretations of how I think I feel. That’s one thing. The relationship between my anxiety level and waiting for The Last Minute to get something done is more complex than I had thought. Another finding from my carefully designed personal research is that the anxiety did diminish with each repetition of Getting an Early Start.

Can I tell you something kind of sad, though? It is not nearly as fun to get things done ahead of schedule. There just isn’t much juice there. Yes, it is boring!

So I have decided to consciously choose how I want it to be. I can opt for the juice and brain sparkle of  The Last Minute. Or I can opt for the peace of Getting an Early Start. I have even been known to create an artificial deadline (this works well for taxes) so that I both get the juice and ensure prompt results. The most important conclusion I have made is that I don’t have to feel bad about myself to be productive. Feeling bad is an add-on and unnecessary. I love my way of being. I love that I get to have this sparkly brain. I am not going to beat myself up for waiting for The Last Minute anymore, and neither should you! (Unless you are my client and we are talking about sending my payment.)

Here’s wishing you a productive day of self-adoration! You sparkly person, you. And whatever way you choose to be, remember to celebrate your successes!

My intellect tells me that, logically speaking, I, and everything else, is an emanation from the matter of the universe. Whatever is has co-evolved following the same laws of science. I am one with all matter. While I may think of myself as a distinct entity separate from the other, mostly carbon-based, beings, I have emerged much the same way grass, oceans, and planetary systems have emerged. The thing that largely distinguishes me from the moss on the roof is that I can talk about my experience. From this intellectual perspective (which is likely in direct opposition to the carefully thought out intellectual analysis of someone else) I see reality in certain ways.

From my intellectual perspective, I see reality as something that is hard and fast and true. If it is observable by others, it is real. If something is only experienced by one person, it is likely a misperception. As for creating reality, intellect says that both the world that I observe and I, the observer, have emerged from the laws of nature and continue to respond in fairly predictable ways based on all the events that have preceded the current moment. I am experiencing myself writing this article partly because I was born human which contributed to my need to express myself and basically do a great deal of chattering. My writing of this article is also due to my history of reinforcement, which includes the attention I receive from readers of my writing. Given the right information, one could predict that I would be writing this article at this moment (several days after it is due, as it so turns out). Just as one can predict that the moon will continue to travel around the earth. The moon’s behavior is based on some things that must have occurred many moons ago, so to speak. And it continues to move around the earth because of the laws of physics. (Please don’t be troubled by the question of what created the laws of physics. A law of nature simply refers to something the cause of which we cannot explain. I guess it is science’s version of faith? Wait, this is screwing up my whole analysis! Never mind.)

In my intellectual world, everything that happens has a rational explanation. Everything that is real makes logical sense. We may not know all the mechanisms at work, yet. But there is an outside reality that is largely independent of what anyone may have to say about it. Right!

Now enter my subjective, illogical, emotional experience of the world. I have had experiences that my skeptical mind has no choice but to reject. I have experienced moments of synchronicity where coincidence decides to dress in very flamboyant colors. In addition to my synchronicity experiences, I have “manifested” things by visualizing exactly what I want. Logic, anyone? Skeptical mind doubts the veracity what I just wrote. It says that I need to operationally define my terms and prove that these experiences are repeatable. Skeptical mind takes itself way too seriously!

Let me give you an example of something that I “created” by mere thought. (Please don’t laugh. I think it’s crazy, too.) When I was moving to Port Townsend two summers ago I was having a terrible time of finding a place to rent. I knew every place in town and didn’t like any of them. One night I decided to use the woo-woo concept referred to as the Secret, sourcing, manifesting, or the Law of Attraction. I visualized what I wanted in some detail. Here is what I picture my house to be: across the street from a playground, wood shakes, vaulted ceiling, wood floors, interior wood “accents”, a trampoline that my son could use, oh, and just so I knew it when I saw it, I want a stained glass window as part of the architecture. The very next day my son and I decided to park on Taylor Street and just walk around. There was a man working on a concrete pathway going up to a new house who explained that the main floor was to be an office and the upstairs was an apartment. He invited us to take a look. This dwelling was across Lawrence Street from the Community Center playground, wood shakes on the upper half (my half) of the house, vaulted wood ceiling, cork floors (I fell in love!), many wood “accents” including visible wood structural cross-beam, and a stained glass window above the hall entry in the wall partition. But no trampoline. Oh well.

The next day I met with the couple who owns the apartment and they explained to me that every summer they put out a trampoline in the back yard for the kids and that my son would be welcomed to use it. My face must have turned white. My skeptical mind had so easily rejected the notion that I had created my own reality because the trampoline was such a glaring omission to my vision. Woo-woo world gave skeptical mind a slap in the face!

So what gives? I have “manifested” other things, too. A friend asked me if I created the apartment or if I merely sensed its existence. I said yes. How should I know?! Maybe there is some kind of primordial knowing that is stored in every atom and is accessible to anyone who knows it is there? Maybe there is some sort of particle/wave pattern that can be perceived by people if they get quiet enough to “hear” it. Maybe there is a collective unconscious that can be tapped at will. Maybe coincidences happen quite often and the odds are good that you will stumble across one if you start playing Nostradamus with your life. It all sounds pretty crazy like magic and witchcraft. But I bet fire was a pretty freaky experience for early people. I bet they thought it was impossible and unexplainable. There was no knowledge to back up their experience and therefore it was probably the workings of some deity or sorcerer. (Hmmm, “source-erer”.)

Let’s suppose for the moment that these experiences are merely coincidence, except for the fire thing because I think we have some pretty solid theories about how that whole thing works, now. Even if we cannot create our reality with our thoughts, it seems much more likely that we will get what we say we want if we pretend that we can create our reality. If you have a solid vision of what you want and live from the certainty that you will get it, aren’t you much more likely to have it come true than if you get the jump on turning your back on it before it can turn its back on you? Many people say they want healthy love relationships but seem completely unwilling to behave as though the possibility even exists. What would happen if such a person went out into the world curious as to when they would meet the person they had solidly imagined? I am guessing that this person’s whole energy and way of being would be different and that something decidedly different would happen to them than the usual. One of my favorite mentors is fond of quoting his mother, “If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.”

What would you like to create with your thoughts? The first step is simply to be open to possibilities beyond what you know. The next step is to create a compelling vision and reserve a space for it to happen in your life. I am visioning that you experiment with this idea and find value in applying it to your life.