October 14, 2024

Self Coaching Skills: Take Control of Your Life

From Volume 16, Issue 1:Did you declare a New Year’s resolution?

And are you now wondering why you still can’t seem to change a behavior? (My nemesis remains getting into conversations and then talking over the other person.)

Maybe you’d like to develop skills for your business or employer or personal life. Have you ever worked with a coach—for business, life, or golf—but you still struggle to realize certain goals?

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Solving the problem

From Volume 11, Issue 4:Here’s Mr. Oil and Mr. Water staring at each other across the desk. Both are replaying a video of themselves in their youth in the same emotional situation. One’s getting harassed for underperforming, and the other’s on the offense, because that was (and is today) his role and makes his world work the way he wants it to.

Allowed to play out, the dialog that develops between these two (and husbands and wives and parents and kids) will most likely follow the same pattern it’s followed for years. One individual, locked in their Knower/Judger response patterns, will elicit the same response from the other individual locked in their K/J response patterns. There’s virtually no hope that anything different will happen than has happened in the past. It’s a downward spiral and actually, with repeated experiences, becomes easier and easier to reach the level of dysfunctional faster.

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Feeding Yourself New Information

From Volume 10, Issue 1: To his credit, President Obama made a very valid point in his final speech from Chicago. We tend to search for our news from the sources that most align with our Knower/Judger prejudices. (He didn’t use that nomenclature, unfortunately.) Nice for us, but this tendency, and the increasing amount of information we are feeding ourselves to affirm our prejudices, is tearing our society apart. How can we overcome this? Read more.

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Creative Quitting: The Art of Letting Go

From Volume 9, Issue 12:Stick-to-itiveness. I was raised on it. Commitment…always a good thing, right? Toughing it out has been a cornerstone of my existence, imprinted by a can-do dad and a cheerleader mom, both products of the “Greatest Generation.” So obviously, not quitting is right smack in the middle of my “comfort zone.” That should be a warning in itself. “Fish or cut bait,” the old saying goes. Well, I’m here to vote in favor of “cutting bait.” I’ve termed it “creative quitting.”

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Making the Old New Again

From Volume 9, Issue 5:“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” —Yogi Berra

Sometimes I see new things I want to try…tennis…bridge…fishing…sailing. Other times I yearn to just stay in my comfort zone…play the piano…eat at restaurants “where everybody knows your name”…visit the same towns on vacations. And often, I remember things I used to do that gave me pleasure…playing guitar…songwriting…dead reckoning rally navigation (I’ll explain this last one in due time). These are activities and places that used to be in my comfort zone, and they might represent a third tine on that fork between what’s comfortable and what will help us grow.

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