Accelerate Your Search™ Now

Summer is in full swing.   If you are ready to move to the next level, now is the time.  Life is ready for you — it always has been.

Enjoy the weeks of summer.  Be ready to jump into fall, spend a few minutes this week setting the stage for your personal transformation.

Transformation only happens when you are truly ready to shift and take action.  

Here are three steps that will help you be ready for your personal transformation in the months ahead:

1. Listen to yourself.  Listen carefully to what you want and what you feel, then write it down.
2. Jot down your concerns about what is next for you.
3. Be truthful with yourself about each of your concerns.  Did you note all your concerns?  Did you note the real concern(s)?  Don’t stop with the surface issues and concerns.

Review your notes.  Reflect on the data.  For example, if you want a new job and you are concerned about the salary, make sure this is your real concern or your only concern.

Then ask yourself, “What can I do to address the salary of the job I really want?”  Often the limits people initially see are easily overcome.

These steps can help you accelerate your transformation to the life and career you want.

If you want to create personal transformation faster you can partner with a coach, a trusted advisor or mentor.

Try the three steps and share you comments below.

For businesses, teams and individuals, January is filled with recapping the prior year’s results, impacts and challenges and looking ahead to the opportunities in the new year.  Over the last several decades I have not only done this in my business, but also in my personal life.

Taking stock of accomplishments, challenges and impacts helps me discern areas I need to shift or adjust.  This allows me to move to the next level and to find more meaning and satisfaction in my work.  I try to complete the process by mid-January.  Doing so almost always improves my impact and results going forward.

Last month as I looked at business, team and personal results, I found myself both filled with joy and profoundly sadness.  My work allows me to meet and work with so many professionals, executives, leaders, and teams of organizations that are inspiring, motivated, driven and reaching toward and achieving remarkable impact in the world.

But, why did sadness show up so profoundly as I reviewed the prior year?

Simple.  The Friday before I sat down to complete my recap I had an experience in which I found myself unable (or unwilling) to honestly and openly look at the behavior of another.  In the event, I judged the person’s behavior as directed toward me — I felt it was about my value as a person.

I was upset and, in fact, I got very little sleep that Friday night.

The story I was telling myself began to cloud my view of the past year and I couldn’t bring myself to complete my year-in-review that weekend.

Sadly, the story was not reflective of the previous year’s results, nor was my judgement about the person’s behavior correct.  My inner voice was defining the entire year based on one event . . . and how I wasn’t enough.  Luckily, I reached for the “pause button.”

Thank goodness I did.  By Tuesday I was able to tap into my own quiet space and willingness to look at the event, the year, and the true results.  I was also willing to look at the sadness and the joy for what it was.

It was a year of shift and transformation.  The prior year was filled with failures, lessons, bridges crossed, and successes. It included supporting and helping many people, leaders, and teams achieve their goals.  It was an impactful and meaningful year.

A review of the year usually offers me many insights.  The greatest insight from the past year for me is the fact that I have been more willing to stop and press pause.  Pausing created many important shifts for me.

For the coming year, the impact of this insight is a profound reminder that the behavior of others is a reflection of the state of their relationship with themselves and not a statement about my value.

Transformation occurs one moment at a time. I am grateful for NOW.  A simple pause, allows me to create space and willingness to be present.

The biggest insight from last year?  Continue to use the pause button.

Did you do a review of the prior year?  What insight did you gain?

What will you continue to do this year?  What will you stop doing?

Share your thoughts below.

What will you do with your extra day?

Will you Elevate Your Extraordinary™?  Would you like to do so?

If so, here is a simple action you can take:  look at your vision for the year.

Do this first in your mind’s eye.  Close your eyes and see the year unfold as you want it to be.  Now, read the vision or plan you created for 2016.

Next, jot down three actions you need to take on or before Feb 29th to shift your results so they align with your vision for the year.

Now, open your calendar and set a 30-minute appointment for a progress check-in with yourself in 60 days. In your calendar, note the three actions you committed to achieving.

If you didn’t create a vision for the year, no problem.  Pause and write down the vision you saw when you closed your eyes. Making the shift to align your current activities with the steps necessary to achieve more satisfying and fulfilling work is not hard.

Here are three things that help:

1.  A commitment to shift.  Be willing to shift and believe you can make a change.

2.  Willingness to take action.  Moving to the next level is not bestowed on individuals just because they show up and hang out. It requires action to see your gifts and use them to the best possible end.

3.  Tapping into support.  We live, work and have impact via our connected world.  Support is two-fold.  We all need support and we all need to give support.  Your gifts provide you with an excellent way to offer and give support to others.  Find (and give) support to discuss, brainstorm and get feedback.

If your goal is the next level and you are ready to Elevate Your Extraordinary,™ February 29th — your extra day — is yours to use how you wish.  What will you do?

Hope you have an amazing and insightful day and step into clarity and action for a more meaningful and satisfying year.

Share your thoughts and what you will do with your extra day below.

The phone rang and the question was, “Why do they hate me?”

The person asking is a member of team I’ve worked with for some time.  This team leader set an intention to impact the team’s service at all levels before his retirement.  As a person, and a leader, he is legendary for his service focus.

The caller is always professional, liked by all new customers and those who casually interact with him.  He provides adequate service and has solid enough performance to maintain a place on the team.  However, he is seen by the team as a person unaware of several of his BIG blind spots.

We ALL have blind spots and this team knows that well.  In fact, all team members except the caller have identified many personal blind spots.  By doing so, they impacted results, fulfillment and increased their personal satisfaction, adding fun and joy to their work.

As the leader’s retirement approached, the team was deeply involved in hiring his replacement — interviews had even occurred earlier that day.

I confirmed the “they” he referred to was the team.  Then, knowing the team as I do, my reply was a question, “How do you know they hate you?”

I was immediately met with resistance and defiance (“No one is going to fire me or make me quit!”).  Then the caller hung up.

His resistance hung in the air around my desk for a bit.

The caller was stuck.  The story was spoken, believed and holding the caller in place.

What questions are you asking?  What stories are you telling?

Is your story creating resistance to satisfaction and fulfillment?

Have you created resistance that is holding you in place?  Share your thoughts below.

Ready to align awesome?

Contact me to discuss how the power of questions and coaching can transform your life, your results and your impact in the world.

Doing the work you love, living your purpose and having impact is fun and amazing!

If you read my blog regularly you may recall a recent post about “drift.”  Over the last year I have discovered much about the impact of drift in my own life.

This year one of my coaches, Laura Clark, has helped my explore my personal drift on a much deeper level.  One discovery in my work with Laura has been the power of experiencing the drift like the wind on my face.  I am also learning to use my own strengths in new and different ways — including asking powerful, and tough, questions.

Most people who know me, including my clients, will tell you I ask tough questions . . . and now I’m learning how to use them to help others who are experiencing drift.

If you are seeking more satisfaction, meaning and fulfillment from your career, it could be time for you to ask the tough questions, too.

WARNING:  Tough questions can cause discomfort, uncertainty, and doubt.

Before you blow by and quickly answer each question just to move on to the next task, I challenge you to pause.  Pause and feel the wind on your face.  If you are inside, pause and feel the temperature of the air in the room on your face.

Here are a few very powerful questions:

• Who am I?
• Where am I?
• Why am I here?

Do you feel the wind or temperature?

During the last year as I have focused on each of these questions in a new and deeper manner, I have rediscovered the power each question truly holds — and, the edge and discomfort of each question.

Whether you are on the edge of transition or transformation, these questions may be all you need to launch you to the next level.

This week, pause and answer these questions.  Answer them as they call to you.

Have a comment, share it below.  If the questions will serve someone you know, share this post.

Do you want to discuss your answers and how they impact your career, business and work?  Let’s talk. I  am happy to schedule a career chat with you.

Doing the work you love, living your purpose, and having impact is fun and amazing!

Ready to align awesome?

Contact me to discuss how the power of questions and coaching can transform your life, your results and your impact in the world.

In life and in work it is important to challenge what you “know” by searching for proof.  It is easier to look for proof than you might imagine.

You don’t need piles of books or a long study course.  Simply ask yourself the appropriate questions.  One of the most powerful is simply, “How do you know?”

Follow that question with another powerful one:  “Is it true?”

It is one thing to “know,” it is significantly different to experience.

By examining your “knowing” with the simple, powerful question, “Is that true?” you are quickly called to look for the proof of what you know or what you think you know.

(If you want to learn more about the power of uncovering your truth through the process of asking questions, visit Bryon Katie’s website.  Her book, Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life, is great, too.)

As a transformation facilitator, I help others directly experience situations by unpacking and examining their life experiences.  Experience changes concepts, ideas and theories.

The power of experience shifts you.  Your reality shifts with experience.

Each of us has thousands of experiences every day, each one of them different.  Through the course of a day our experiences begin to run together.  Yet, each of those individual experiences has the power to provide irreversible shifts.

Earlier in my life, I spent little of no time even aware of many of my experiences, let alone taking the time to unpack or examine the situation.  Why?  I thought it took too much effort, too much time.

The reality is that experiencing and looking at the proof doesn’t take all that much time and, in fact, can actually provide you more hours in your day.  Awareness can do that.  Simple questions, like those mentioned above, will help you look for proof and change your life . . . now and forever.

If it is time for you to look at your experiences and see the proof, let’s talk.  Ready to align awesome?

Doing the work you love, living your purpose and having impact is fun and amazing!  Contact me to discuss how the power of questions and coaching can transform your life, your results and your impact in the world.