When working with ourselves and our clients-we are sometimes afraid to to the thought work because we think it means we will have to take action on what we find. For example, if you work with a client on her thoughts about her husband-she may be afraid to find out that she has many negative thoughts about him that she was unaware of.  She may be afraid to look at them, or expose them to herself because then she will have to take action on what she

In my current coach training-the question of whether we should empathize with our client's stories came up.   Here are my notes (off of our training forum) to my students based on my approach and thoughts:   Hi  all you amazing coaches!   I want to discuss empathy a bit more.  Empathy is good.  We need empathy to be great coaches. We empathize by understanding their pain and knowing what they feel is real to them without believing the cause (their thoughts) of the pain. When you say

When we are coaching, sometimes we think we know what our client should do. They should leave that horrible husband for sure. They should quit that dead end job. They should not go into debt. They should eat less and exercise more. Really? How do you know what they should do? They should do what they do. They should do what they genuinely want to do. You job is not to guide them in the world. Your job is to guide them into themselves so they can

FROM MERRIAM DICTIONARY: a : the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires : delight b : the expression or exhibition of such emotion : gaiety 2 : a state of happiness or felicity : bliss 3 : a source or cause of delight Defining joy is fascinating to me.  It is kind of one of those things you know when you have experienced it.  It's bigger and wider than happy. It's longer lasting than delight. Joy

As defined by PubMed Health: Depression may be described as feeling sad, blue, unhappy, miserable, or down in the dumps. Most of us feel this way at one time or another for short periods. Clinical depression is a mood disorder in which feelings of sadness, loss, anger, or frustration interfere with everyday life for an extended period of time. The question then becomes when does it begin to interfere with everyday life and why does this happen to us sometimes and not others? My answer is that

Notice whenever you are in a hurry to do something. Lose weight.  Get money. Quit a job.  Divorce your husband. What you are really in a hurry to do is get out of pain. Getting out of pain does not happen fastest by changing circumstances. Getting out of pain fast happens by changing our thoughts about a circumstance. When you have a client who is in a hurry to change anything in their life besides their mind-it is an opportunity to do some deep thought work. By

When you are with a client you don't need to give them the update on every single tool you are using and why you are using it. Many times I will coach using the self coaching model and never even mention it to my client. I will ask them about their thoughts feelings and emotions, but I won't have to explain why or give them a diagram of the model or teach them how it works. Sometimes the model is just a tool I use for my

New coaches always seem to make the same mistake when they start out. They want the whole ocean. They want every boat, fish, and piece of sand to visit their website and hire them. You don't need the whole ocean. You don't want the whole ocean. You just need your bucket full of amazing. Your people who love you and you love them. Your clients will love YOUR style and your blog and your work and they will want to work with you. It won't be hard

Before I get much deeper on posting feelings and their meanings, so we can better understand what the heck in going on in our lives, I wanted to clear up a few things. First, I use the words emotion and feeling interchangeably.  But you should know they have different definitions depending on where you look. Most definitions contradict each other.  I found a definition of emotion that was: a strong feeling; and I found a definition of feeling that was: an experience of emotion.  Neither definition was

When working with clients who feel shame or guilt, it is first important to determine which it is.  Shame is the feeling caused by the thought that there is something wrong with me and guilt is caused by a thought that I have done something wrong.  Next, by finding the thought behind it-you can determine whether they have complex belief systems (lots of thoughts they have thought over and over) or just one thought they believe deeply. Typically, when it comes to shame there are many identity