Questioning Life

Regrets?

"Adults' most common regret:

I never took enough risks.

Next: I wasn’t assertive enough, and I lacked self-discipline."

Rickard T. Kuiner, March, 1989, Homemade.

Are these your regrets?

The reason productivity improvements don't work (as well as they could)

GTD, 18 minute plans, organized folders... none of them work as well as you'd like.

via sethgodin.typepad.com

Seth Godin has it right. We don't need plans or resolutions for the new year. We need to make and keep commitments, whether in work or in life. Do what you know you need to do.

What Would You Like to Have Happen?

Coaching is about helping you meet your goals? One of the first questions I ask is this one: what would you like to have happen (in one area of your life)? This is our starting point. Skype me at bill.mcreynolds if you want to anawer that question for yourself.

Are You Ready?

"I have learned that coaches do not fix problems; they support people who are ready to own their lives," Thomas Leonard, a founder of the coaching profession.

Resolving Tension

Some tensions just cannot be resolved. And, they don't have to be. I like to resolve tensions and other issues, don't you? Right or wrong, here or there, left or right, good or bad. I want to decide one way or another. Sometimes I cannot, and that is okay.

My wife and I like our lives here in the United States, but we also like her native India. We like some things about the one place and some things about the other. Sometimes we want to live here, and other times me want to live there.

Then, one day I realized that I don't have to resolve those issues. I can just let myself be content with acknowledging that I love both places, and that sometimes I don't love either!

Oh, well.

 

Becoming What You are Capable of Becoming

"If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming," Victor Frankl quoting Goethe.

God will see to it (Genesis 22:14)

I was working in our kitchen late yesterday afternoon, when I looked into the driveway we share with two other townhouses and saw our neighbor's 2-year-old son walk past the window. He was moving quickly. When I didn't immediately see either parent close on his heels, I grabbed my shoes and went out to check. I know he sometimes takes off while his mother is getting ready to put him into the car. When our daughter was that age, she once got out and went to a nearby Kroger Supermarket. We found her in the manager's office, holding court, as if that was where she was supposed to have been.

By the time I got to the front of our property, I saw no sign of Prince (his name). Another neighbor had just pulled in and gotten out of his car. He said he had also seen Prince go past, towards the street. My neighbor and I went back to the street and looked again. I didn't see Prince, but my neighbor said, "Look, my wife has just turned onto the street, and she has stopped and picked up Prince."

We live on a busy street, and there are a lot of parked vehicles, sometimes obscuring the view as people back out of their driveways. When my neighbor pulled into our drive, she stopped, opened the car door and handed Prince to me. Then she got out and told her husband to park the car, for she was as startled by what had happened as we were.

Prince's parents told me they have special locks on the doors, but sometimes these things happen. I was almost immediately aware that God had been present here, and that we had not noticed. This was like Jacob's "aha!" moment at Bethel in Genesis 28 (God is here already and I didn't even notice), or like the angel of the Lord staying Abraham's hand in Genesis 22. God provided a ram for the offering, in place of Abraham's son. Some say this was the moment after which child sacrifice was no longer practiced. For Abraham, it was the time when he said, "The Lord will see to it," that is, God will provide in our time of need. We traditionally use the actual words of this passage to describe this attribute of God, Jehovah Jireh, from the Hebrew "YHWH yireh."

It is understandable that we lament and cry before God when something disastrous happens. We wonder where God was when we needed him. But, how often do we stop and praise God when he was there in our time of need.

Let me do that now, for Prince: Thanks be to God, for seeing to our needs in times of trouble!

A Better Vision for the New Year

Resolutions! Maybe you have had the experience of making several resolutions at the beginning of every year, only to find out that, by February 1, you can’t even remember what they were (except losing weight, of course!). Why do we fail when trying to make positive changes in our lives? There are several answers to that question.

Let’s look at a typical resolution. I will just take one that I have used. Two or three years ago, I resolved to study the Old Testament more closely in the year ahead. I took home several of my Hebrew study aids and my Hebrew Bible. I noticed these books sitting there from time to time, but I think I may have opened them only once or twice. After almost two years, I just brought the whole stack of books back to my church office.

What do you think happened? Why wasn’t I able to keep my New Year’s resolution? Here’s what I think—my resolution was too vague. It would have been better if I had resolved something like the following: I will work my way through the book of Genesis (or another) beginning on a certain date, spending an hour every Monday morning reading two chapters in Hebrew and in English, and using my language tools to understand every Hebrew expression. See the difference? The second approach is more specific. As we would develop a goal at our workplace, the second resolution answered questions related to who would do what, how and by which date (when). Mind you, I did none of that, and that formidable pile of books stares at me from across the room as I write (what, you don’t believe books can see you!! Mine read me!).

Here is perhaps an even better way to begin the New Year. Ditch the traditional resolutions altogether. Try visioning instead. A vision involves something you see, of course. Therefore, envision what you see regarding yourself for 2011. Do this by completing this statement as many times as you can: I see myself… You may want to think in terms of categories, such as fitness, family, food (I didn’t do that on purpose!).

You can continue this list until you run out of ideas. If you are using a word processor, you simply hit “return” after you finish each statement. Then, look at your list again, and strike through any statements that don’t appeal to you the second time through. These are vision statements that don’t attract you at this time. You may want to re-visit those secondary “I see myself” statements at mid-year, when they may be more attractive.

Now let’s say you are left with five visioning statements. I will choose one arbitrarily: “I see myself praying more in 2011.” Apply the specificity suggested above, and approach this vision in the following way. You are the “who.” Prayer is the “what.” Now, for “how,” decide literally where you will pray, what kind of prayer it will be (free or from a devotional guide, for instance). That leaves when. Will you pray every morning, for five or ten minutes, or would you prefer to pray in the evening?

The keys to making this exercise work for you are these. Follow up only on those vision statements that you find interesting now. Save the “shoulds” for another time. Be specific—who, what, how, when, where. You know how that works.

Of course, the prayer example was just an arbitrary choice….or not!

What Do You See?

The rarest gift is that of looking and seeing what is really there. I fight nostalgia, that is, I would not want to move to a new place and try to re-create the place I left. Yet, for many of us, that is exactly what we try to do, even if not consciously. So, when you look at something (someone) do you think of another time or place as a reference? "This reminds me...."

I ask you to work to enjoy here and now, wherever that is, without reference to what could be or what has been. And, ask yourself regularly, "What do I see?"

The Benefit of Coaching

Life coaching should guide persons so they become both blessed and a blessing.