Posts tagged Executive Coaching
How Far Should You Plan Your Life?
Feb 24th
“If you don’t have a plan for yourself, you’ll be part of someone else’s”. ~American proverb
Last time I talked about my new laptop running Windows 7. I’ve been using it many hours a day for a couple of weeks now and I still love it. Windows 7 is a great improvement over Vista, so much so that I am going to convert two of my other computers to run Windows 7. And the new Sony Vaio “F” series? I have never had a computer boot up and settle down so quickly and the hd screen and blu-ray player are just great!
How Far Should You Plan Your Life?
How far should you plan your life? In my opinion: as far you’d like to be alive living it! In more practical terms, I encourage my clients to have motivating and exciting goals that go out at least 10 years. In 10 years you can accomplish virtually anything – as long as you use those 10 years wisely.
Planning and goal setting go hand in hand. I set goals that excite me and then I put together the best plan that I can, to make that goal happen. Does that mean that goal setting and planning happen at the same time? Generally speaking – no. For most people, and most businesses, the process of setting goals and the process of making plans to achieve those goals should be very separate. For companies beyond a certain size, goal setting and creating workable plans to achieve those goals may even be best done by different groups of people. I’ll talk more about this separation of creation and planning in larger companies in another post.
Do You Have 10 Years of Exciting Goals?
If yes – great! Congratulations! Now go set some great and motivating goals 15 years out and soon we will talk about the process of creating plans to make these goals part of your everyday reality.
You don’t have any goals that go out 10 years or more? Then here is some homework. Remembering that you can accomplish virtually anything in 10 years, and being completely unconcerned (at this time) about what it will take to make these goals a reality; set at least 3 goals that stretch out at least 10 years. If you need a little help, consider these questions:
If you were certain that you could accomplish it, in the next 10 years,
- Where would you like to be living?
- How much money would you like to have saved?
- What would you be doing for a living?
Next time I’ll talk more about 10 year goals – big goals – and a great attitude for creating these goals. (And soon I’ll give you a simple technique to put yourself in a great mental frame for setting exciting, compelling and authentic goals.).
Till next time faithful reader…Jack
“Wishing consumes as much energy as planning”. ~American proverb
The Birth of an Executive Coach
Feb 9th
“None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Birth of an Executive Coach
Last time I finished talking about my decision to self-publish my first book even though I had traditional publishing offers on the table. This time I’m going to talk about some of the actual content of my upcoming book – a book about goals and achievement.
I was born as an Executive Coach in May 1989, although I did not know that this was my destiny at the time. Like most newborns, I did not have a clue what was going on and it would take me a number of years to make sense of the world around me.
In May of 89, I left my well-paid job in Retail Mega-Box management, well-paid but otherwise boring and totally unsatisfying, and went into Executive Search (headhunting) and the temporary employment business. I had only trivial experience in either of these businesses. I had been called by headhunters a few times, looking to move me from one Mega-Box to another. These headhunters didn’t seem too bright and they seemed to make a great deal of money. (Interesting combination. I certainly wanted to make a great deal of money and at times I was a veritable idiot. I filed this information away for further analysis.)
In the world of temporary employment, I had worked extensively at numerous temporary agencies in Southern California after I graduated from college. Eventually I found my first career position and stopped working temporary assignments. While working, I had gained some great information though – there was a great deal of money to be made in the temporary business and they, the owners that I had met, didn’t seem all that bright either.
What does this have to do with my first book on goals? I’m getting there, I promise!
Death as a Counselor
In December of 1985 my father died of leukemia. He was relatively young, 61 years old, when he died. Vibrant and healthy for most of his life, in 18 months he was stripped of virtually everything – his physical vitality, his freedom of movement, his privacy and eventually his life – in 18 short months he lost all of these.
I visited him almost every other day for most of this time. My blood was helping to keep him alive and we saw more of each other in this short time than we really had in years. He talked often of the things that he was going to do if he got out of the hospital. He was going to travel again. He was going to go see the pyramids. He had a long list of things that he wanted to do and experience. He died without having done any of these – he died with most of his dreams unlived.
His death affected me deeply. I was 26 years old when he died and I swore that I was going to do my best to retire before I was 40 years old and I was going to live my dreams – for both of us.
Goals were the Starting Place
I did manage to retire before I was 40. This early retirement only lasted about 10 years, no one had told me how much money could be spent if you had full time to devote to the process of spending, but my next early retirement is coming up fast. And this time, well, I have a much higher number in mind for my retirement! Come back next time and learn more about how goals were the starting place for me then and the drivers for me now.
Till next time faithful reader…Jack
“It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.” ~ Sir Edmund Hillary
A New Year and New Beginnings
Jan 1st
“We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives… not looking for flaws, but for potential.” ~Ellen Goodman
Happy New Year! May this be a wonderful year for all of us! It is approximately 7 am on New Year’s Day as I am writing this entry. I actually tried to start writing this 2 hours ago, but with the recent death of my computer and the loss of all my saved passwords and shortcuts, the process of getting into my blog and website was considerably more challenging than in the past. I have been actively researching new computers and will make my selection soon – and then things will return to even better than normal – or so I hope.
For now, I wish you all the best. My intention is provide useful information in an interesting way that you can immediately use to enhance your life – come back often and let me know how I am doing.
Bye for now…Jack
“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.” ~Edith Lovejoy Pierce
Making Money Online and Writing Part Six
Aug 5th
“Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!” ~Andrew Carnegie
In my last entry, I was talking about the pain that I was causing myself and wondering why. I had set my unconscious mind the task of giving me information about this issue. Here is the download from my unconscious mind to my conscious mind: I keep remembering this issue and feeling pain about it because my unconscious mind wants me to be safe in the future and does not feel that I have prepared myself sufficiently to feel safe should this happen again. I would have to agree!
In other words, the positive intention of this behavior – an unpleasant memory coming up again and again and then my feeling bad about it again and again – this behavior is happening to serve me. This behavior, if I temporarily view it as a separate aspect of myself, is trying to help me. Once I have satisfied the requirements of this aspect of me, then the behavior should go away.
(I realize that I am throwing a whole structure of beliefs and presuppositions at you – many of which would take hours to fully explain. Here is the best way that I know to start you off in the study of NLP, other than taking certification courses: read a good book. Years ago, when I was first sent on the mission to study NLP by a nearly magical executive recruiter, someone who was so good at his job that it literally seemed like magic to me, I started by reading a book about NLP. I started by reading “Heart of the Mind” by Connirae Andreas and Steve Andreas. This is still a good way to start.)
I’ll talk more about positive intentions and seemingly unpleasant aspects of behaviors another time. For today, consider reading some NLP – I know it would serve you. For me, as soon as I recognized that this behavior and the unpleasant feelings associated with it, had a positive intention for me and I could agree with the positive intention, then I started to feel better immediately. Now I am taking steps to mentally prepare myself should the same situation happen again – with poorly-evolved coworkers.
What am I working on today to make money online?
- I am making a blog post.
- I am reviewing 3 weeks worth of my blogging coaching.
- I am installing some new plugins into my blog.
- I am continuing to look for new and targeted followers on twitter.
- I am making 3 tweets on twitter.
- I am reviewing my vision of my intended future to stay motivated.
- I have added more notifiers to my blog so that when I make a new post, more services are notified.
That’s it for today. Sorry if this entry seems complex – it probably is too much information without enough background. I really do encourage you to explore NLP, there are lots of great ways to begin that process. I know for me, my initial study of NLP and then the dedicated time I invested in training; all of this totally transformed my life then and my life now. I am still grateful for being sent on the mission to explore it, almost exactly 20 years ago today.
Till next time faithful reader…Jack
“Picture yourself in your minds eye as having already achieved this goal. See yourself doing the things you’ll be doing when you’ve reached your goal.” ~Earl Nightingale
These Questions Make The Difference in Goals
Jun 5th
“The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking”. ~Albert Einstein
Last time I talked about what I do when I don’t achieve a goal on time. This happens quite often by the way. I would say that I only achieve my goals exactly when I first wanted to get them done perhaps 40% of the time. However, that doesn’t mean that I give up on my goals. I am passionately committed to making my dreams become my waking reality! Overall, I achieve something like 95% of my goals and the rest…well somewhere along the way of pursuing them I changed and I no longer wanted them. That is also fine – I grew and things changed for me.
So, on to questions and goals that I didn’t get done exactly when I wanted them to happen. (Please notice how I structure this sentence – I am presupposing that I will get this goal done – just my estimation of timing was off!)
Questions to ponder and answer when you don’t get a goal done on time:
First off: Honestly answer this question: Do you still want this goal? You must really want it! Assuming that you do then answer these questions:
- What stopped me from getting this goal done on time?
- Did I have a great plan for achieving this goal?
- What part of the plan was easy for me to do?
- What part of the plan was hard for me to do?
- Did something or collection of somethings stop me from following through on my plan?
- If something stopped me, how can I change this now or soon?
- Was I afraid of something…is there something about the goal itself that I am afraid of?
- Was I afraid of something…is there something about a step or steps along that way that I am afraid of?
- If I was afraid of something, what steps will I take to eliminate this fear or eliminate these fears?
- Did I model someone that had already achieved my goals and the steps that they took?
- Who else can I model…who else already has what I want and what did they do to get there?
- What do I believe about this goal; do I need to install some additional beliefs in myself to make achieving this goal easier?
- What do I believe about this goal; do I need to change some limiting beliefs in myself to make achieving this goal easier?
- Did I underestimate how much work it would require to achieve this goal? (My number one personal tendency!)
- Do I have a compelling enough set of reasons why for this goal…have I put down exciting reasons why I want to achieve this goal?
- Did I review my reasons why often enough to stay in touch with my source of motivation?
- What can I eliminate from my life, from my days and weeks, in order to free up more time to achieve this goal (and my other goals!)
By the way, this series of questions asked at the beginning of a goal setting session will give you a wonderful plan for achieving any goal! These are powerful questions and they require significant effort to answer. Also you may not know how to do some of the tasks that the questions will reveal as needed…together we will explore these techniques.
These questions also are the basis of my work with clients – who always hire me to achieve a goal or goals – and the basis of the book that I will be releasing later this year on the subject of goals and goal achieving. May you find these questions illuminating!
Till next time…Jack
“Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again”? ~Winnie the Pooh
What Do You Do When You Don’t Succeed?
Jun 4th
“Fall seven times, stand up eight”. ~Japanese Proverb
Last time I started to talk about what I do when I have set a goal – a result with a deadline – and I fail to achieve it. I might have achieved part of the goal – within the time that I had allocated, or perhaps I didn’t achieve any of the goal. Either way, what I do next is critical.
I’m going to start first by talking about what I don’t do.
- I don’t beat myself up.
- I don’t tell myself that I’m a failure.
- I don’t make myself feel terrible.
- I don’t make excuses (although I do look for reasons and patterns).
- I don’t quit.
- I don’t blame anyone else (even if they were involved).
All of these items involve negative motivation and although I recognize and use the power of negative motivation – moving away from something that you don’t want, I don’t start here when I am looking at goals that I failed to achieve in the time that I had given them to be achieved.
So what do I do and what do I coach my clients to do? Come back next time and we will start to give you a nice clean and highly effective pattern to model. Bye the way, how many of you have seen the Disney movie Meet the Robinsons? If you haven’t, go find it. I you have seen it, watch it again and look for the empowering beliefs and great self-talk that is nested into this movie. I just love it!
I was saddened to read today about the death of the American actor David Carradine. When I was a young man looking for role models, the show Kung Fu staring David Carradine was a favorite of mine. I still own much of my love of helping people and many of my empowering beliefs to this show. Thanks David (and of course the show’s writers and producers). You can read more about David here and here.
Till next time…Jack
“He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else”. ~Benjamin Franklin
Planning for Success Part One
Feb 3rd
“Come to the edge, He said.
They said: We are afraid.
Come to the edge, He said.
They came. He pushed them,
And they flew . . .”
~Guillaume Apollinaire – French poet
This is going to be a multi-post series of articles about planning. I am going to show the exact techniques that I teach to my clients and I am going to illustrate these techniques by creating my own plan for getting back in shape.
In the last entry I shared and clarified the goal: “I will return to my optimal bodyweight before the end of 2009.” became “I will return to 195 pounds of bodyweight by the morning of December 31st, 2009.”
So the first step was to clarify the goal – to make sure that it was easy to understand and told my brain exactly what I wanted to achieve by what date. (By the way, if there is some big goal that you really want to accomplish, you might consider taking it through this process with me. I know that you will find it useful.) So, now I have my goal and my deadline. The next question that I am going to ask is: Is it possible to achieve this, is it reasonable to achieve this, in the time that I have allowed? I believe yes, just!
Let me explain. I have 11 months to achieve this weight loss and I currently weigh around 330 pounds. I intend to return to my ideal weight of 195 pounds which means that I must lose 135 pounds in 11 months. Simple math tells me that equals 12.28 pounds per month or approximately 3.07 pounds per week. Is this possible? Yes it is. From my past efforts at losing weight and my research, this is indeed possible. Is it reasonable – probably not completely. It is however exciting, and I will take the excitement over a more reasonable goal.
How about you? Does your goal excite you? Is it possible? If it seems impossible to you, then move out the date or reduce the goal until you get a signal from your brain that you believe it can be done. It is okay to be afraid, we will talk about what that means in this series, but you must at least believe that the goal is possible in the time that you have allowed. If not, make a change in the quantity of the goal and the time allotted until you believe that it can be done. It is okay if it is a stretch. It is okay if it feels a little scary to write it down. It is okay if you don’t know how you will achieve it yet. It is okay if you have failed to achieve this same goal in the past. We will deal with each of these things.
How about excitement? Is this an exciting goal? Make sure that it is very exciting to you and that it is your goal – not a goal that someone else has given you. If you have been given a goal by someone else, then rewrite the goal until it deals with rewards directly related to you and it excites you!
For example, your boss might tell you: “You need to open 50 new accounts this year and they need to each buy an average of $4,000 dollars.” This is actually a more clear goal than most bosses will actually give. Still, it has nothing directly related to you in this goal. There may be an implicit “or else”. This might be: or else we will demote you. It might be: or else we will fire you. There will certainly be some negative consequences associated with a goal that you are given – an “or else”. Rarely, there will be some positive consequences discussed. For example: Do this and we will promote you or do this and we will give you a $10,000 bonus. This may or may not be enough to excite you.
For me, I am not directly excited by money. I am much more excited by thinking about the freedom and the experiences that the money will buy. I don’t know what motives you most – what turns you on – but you do! So rewrite any goal that you have, self created or given to you by another, until in positive terms, it talks about benefits that excite you.
What about my goal? Does “I will return to 195 pounds of bodyweight by the morning of December 31st, 2009.” excite me? Yes it does. Does it clearly state why I am excited about this? No. It doesn’t. Next time, I will show you how to create a vision to go along with the goal that will do this very thing.
To recap:
- Write down your goal
- Make sure your goal has a clear and easy to measure “What by When”
- Check for reasonableness or possibility – can this be done?
- If it can’t or feels impossible, the rewrite the goal, changing the amount or the time frame until you can believe it.
- Check for excitement. Make sure that you are excited about this goal.
- If this a goal that was given to you by another – check for all of these same things.
Till next time… Jack
“Courage is being scared to death—but saddling up anyway.” ~John Wayne
Your Plan for Success
Feb 2nd
“The first wealth is health”. ~Emerson
This is the year! After so many years of being out of shape, this is the year that I return to fitness. This is a big statement – a big goal. I have been out of shape, in varying degrees of terrible, ever since I quite smoking more than ten years ago. So how am I going to do this? What am I going to do to give myself the best possible chance of success with this goal? Excellent questions.
In fact, these questions are so excellent, that I am going to devote the next few blog entries to developing my plan for success right in front of your eyes. This will allow you to see all of the elements that I use to create a nearly unstoppable plan for succeeding at any goal – not just weight loss. You will get all of the steps that I use with my clients – without spending any money.
Let me start by restating my goal for health in 2009: I will return to my optimal bodyweight before the end of 2009. So, that is a fairly clear goal, but not quite explicit enough. Whenever possible, you should put a very measurable number on your goals. When I say very measurable, I mean a goal that clearly states ‘what by when”. So, let me restate my goal: I will return to 195 pounds of bodyweight by the morning of December 31st, 2009. Now that is a clear goal and gives my brain really simple things to remember.
Is this a reasonable goal? What will I do to achieve this? Why have I failed in the past? What exactly will I do differently this time? Wow! More great questions. Come back next time and we will continue the process of building a virtually unstoppable “Plan For Success”.
Till next time…Jack
“They claim red meat is bad for you. But I never saw a sick-looking tiger”. ~Chi Chi Rodriguez
Your Vision of the Future Part Nine
Jan 30th
“Talk doesn’t cook rice.” ~Chinese Proverb
Now that you have a great motivating vision for the coming year, it is time to write your longer term vision – a vision that talks about what you life is going to be about for the next five to fifty years. It was important to get the smaller vision, the one year vision, down on paper and learn the process before beginning the bigger vision.
Remember all of those goals that you wrote down that talked about things more than one year in the future? Keep this list, I would recommend forever, and use it to create a vision for the next ten years. Ten years is a great length of time to consider for your next vision. Here you can dream the really big dreams – and have the time to make them happen. Most people, myself included, will tend to overestimate what they can accomplish in one year and massively underestimate what they can accomplish in a decade. In ten years, you can do almost anything that you desire. Your homework for this – build a ten year vision. Go through the exact same steps that I showed you for a one year vision. There is tremendous power in a one year vision combined with a ten year vision and I think you deserve to have this energy at your command.
Creating a Shared Vision with Partners or a Team:
How do you create a shared vision with a life or business partner or a team of individuals? You do it the same basic way that you created your personal vision – by starting with unlimited dreaming and working down to the five most important goals for the coming year. This is a wonderful exercise to do with your team or your life or business partner. In my many years of consulting and coaching, it is extremely rare that I see this actually done and that is a shame. Yes, it takes time – a significant amount of time if more than a few individuals are involved. But you get so much for the invested time!
- You find out what others really want and incorporate these things when possible
- You get rid of hidden agendas that can waste so much time
- You end up with everyone working towards the same goals and knowing why
- You end up with a highly and personally motivated team
- You handle problems, concerns and mixed goals upfront – before you waste lots of time and money
- You get more ideas – more feedback – more information that can make the vision even more powerful
Action. Ultimately, you create a vision to help you take action. Without action nothing happens. Without a vision to guide and power that action, you waste time and money taking the wrong actions.
I hope you enjoyed this mini-series on creating a vision and I hope you use it. I will end this series of articles with a question that I asked myself years ago and it is still motivating: “Haven’t Your Dreams Waited Long Enough?”
Till next time…Jack
“We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once.” ~Calvin Coolidge
Your Vision of the Future Part Eight
Jan 29th
“A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him or her.” ~David Brinkley
Did you get a chance to read through my personal vision for this next year? If not, take a few minutes and read it over; you will find it as part of yesterday’s entry. I want to point out a few of the special features of my vision statement for the coming year that you might consider incorporating into yours.
- Everything in my vision assumes that I have already been successful. I mentally want to be in the place where I expect to succeed. Sure, something could happen that prevents me from achieving one or more of my goals, but every day, as I read my vision, I am going to put myself in the mental frame of mind that I succeeded – that I found a way and made it happen.
- I talk in my vision about how it feels when I have made my goal into my reality. I talk about how great it feels to have achieved this. I am creating an anchor of feeling great that I am attaching to thinking about each of my goals and to taking action on each of my goals. More >