Have you ever felt as if your life is in a state of confusion? You don’t know where you are going, what you are doing, or what should be your priority. Many people are dealing with these issues on a daily basis. They do not understand themselves and their talents. They have no real goals, or they do not know how to attain goals that they have set. Life coaching can help anyone who feels that they can benefit from some assistance in finding direction in their life.

What Does A Life Coach Do?

A life coach will help you restructure your thinking and goals, in order to let you take charge of your own life. They can help you to take a look the direction in which you are going and decide what steps you need to take to improve your life situations. A life coach is not an instructor, telling you exactly what you have to do, but rather a mentor who can help you to determine the best paths. Among the things that most life coaches provide to their clients are:

• Help with long and short-term goal setting
• Assistance in dealing with personal problems
• Developing strategies to reach goals
• Understanding of their own needs and wants and the role they should play in their relationships
• Impartial, but sympathetic, opinions and advice, when needed

There may be many other benefits for each individual who chooses to use a life coach. It all depends on what you and your coach determine are your goals and desires. There is no cut-and-dried formula to the process of coaching. Everything is an individually tailored experience, designed around the client, their needs and goals, and their personality.

Are You A Good Candidate For Life Coaching?

Life coaching can be a positive experience for anyone who wants to make changes in their life. However, you must be at a point where you can be cooperative and ready for change. You should be able to take friendly criticism and suggestions and commit to following through with the plans that you develop with your coach. Be prepared to share those difficult personal issues and admit to your own faults and weaknesses. A life coach has no magic wand that will transform your future, however they can help you to obtain the tools needed to find the answers and solutions you are seeking for life’s problems and challenges.

If you are ready to take a step forward in your life, consider a life coach. They will become an invaluable resource to you in your quest to live out your hopes and dreams. Take the initiative to partner with a coach to discover who you are, what your goals are, and how to obtain them. No matter where you are on your journey, you can always make the rest of the ride a bit smoother and more enjoyable by finding purpose and direction.
Learn more: DenverLifeCoach@gmail.com

So this week has been crazy. I’m in the middle of writing a huge grant, my kids have had all kinds activities, and my Mom had a major surgery this week and I’m hanging out at the hospital a lot. I don’t know if you’ve ever had weeks or days like I’ve been having this week, but they are hard on my diet and healthy eating plan. For example, yesterday I had about 20 minutes to run down to the hospital cafeteria to grab something to eat. My choices were 1. Hot entree line with chicken carbonara (displayed calories: 920- YIKES.; 2. Deli sandwich line 6 people deep waiting; 3. Salad bar largely picked over with all the protein options gone except for the mayonaisse-y tuna salad- sigh. So… I took the best choices I could from the salad bar, grabbed a skim milk, and headed back up to the waiting area.

This was the only chance I had to eat yesterday until I got home at nearly 9pm and had a peanut butter and apple sandwich on whole wheat bread and a glass of wine (not together).

Good thing I had my Shakeology as I was dashing out the door yesterday to meet my folks at the hospital. This was a week where I ended up doing that for at least one meal a day, and I swear, it saved my nutrition and my energy levels. It also kept me from getting crappy food on the road or at the cafeteria. I’m typically not a “shake person” but I’m sold on this stuff. It’s yummy, low calorie (only 140 per serving when you mix with water), filling (I feel full for 3 hours or more when I drink one), and gets me a TON of nutrition. I urge you to check it out. It helps me get the nutrition I need (no matter how busy my day is). Want to try some for free? Email me and I’ll send you some.

One of the most challenging parts of developing a career is climbing to the top of whatever heap you’re in, having proven yourself, taken your knocks, gone the extra mile, and impressed the right people and groups sufficiently to be vested with significant leadership and responsibility. It feels good, doesn’t it? Well, it should, but it interesting, that once that pinnacle is achieved, there’s always more to do, isn’t there? There’s that saying, “Want something done? Ask a busy person.”, and nowhere is that more true than in our jobs, especially if you’ve managed to absorb responsibilities as they’ve been handed to you, perform at a high level, and not totally lose your composure in public.

So this poses a problem, of course, when even you, with seemingly endless capacity, begin to get that “Wow- I’m overcommitted” feeling. It may have taken a long time, but once it happens, it’s a little scary, as it can feel a bit out of control. When we get overcommitted at work or at home, something has to give. The worst-case scenario is when you slog along, continuing to shoulder the burdens that keep getting placed on you and smiling, taking on more and more without unloading anything, and then you drop a ball. The ball drop frequently occurs in a “perfect storm” situation, which can include any combination of variables such as increased work pressure/crisis, spousal/family illness, financial stress, personal health challenges for you or co-workers, unexpected problems that impede work progress, and problems with kids at school. Regardless of the factors contributing to the storm, however, the ball drop occurs for the same reason: there is not enough of you to go around, and the resulting lack of capacity to absorb the unexpected. Hopefully the ball you drop is a little one, but if it’s a big one, the outcome can be a mess and can not only affect you, your family, or the organization you work for, but will certainly take your self-confidence down a few notches.

The best-case scenario, however, is that you decide to deal with the overcommitted feeling before the ball drop occurs. This is a hard habit to develop, especially when you’ve “made it” by being all things to all people all the time, but it’s a critical leadership passage, and one that will prolong your career as well as your mental and physical health. There are 2 basic parts in approaching this, and basically they add up to making strategic decisions about what to give away when things get to be too much.

Part 1: Say No

If your plate is full, admit it. You wouldn’t sit at the dinner table with a plate full of food and when someone passes you the next dish, create a mountain of a meal rather than saying “no, thank you, I have enough”, would you? Hopefully not . Think of saying no to new things in the same way. The next time someone asks to serve on a Board of Directors, politely decline. The next PhD student who approaches you to be their dissertation advisor, let them know you have too many commitments already to do the job they deserve. Admittedly, sometimes you’ll be asked to do something you really want to do, and saying no is not what you want to do. In that case, something else must go to make room for the new task. Remember the plate? Either eat the roll or take it off your plate before taking another helping of something yummy…

Part 2: Give it away

So if you say no to a request or opportunity or want to say yes to something new but have a full plate, step 2 is to create opportunity for someone else. This can be called delegating, but that word suggests passing responsibility down; often, you may have the chance to pass responsibility and opportunity to your peers. When someone asks you to do something and you say no, it’s best if you can offer an alternative to that person, ideally having checked with the individual you’re recommending first. If you need to unload a task or responsibility to allow yourself to take on something new, do that as well, but discuss the possibility with potential recipients of the added task before doing so. The goal here is to spread work around by giving people with capacity additional tasks, not to overload them instead of you.

Clearly, the cynics in the audience (myself included) will say “Oh, yeah- well, we all know that s*** travels downhill, right?” The key here is to pass on opportunities and tasks with integrity and from your ethical core. Listen to your gut here. Although it would be great to unload the huge, complex, painful project you’re struggling with in favor of a new, shiny, simpler one, your gut will tell you that such a move is wrong. Listen to that, and do not pass the buck when it should stop with you. If you are working on the painful project and really want to try to take on the shiny one, let your manager or colleague know that you are interested, but cannot work on the new project until you have completed the current one. Also, when passing incoming tasks or opportunities to others when you cannot take them on, think about the people you work with and who could derive benefit from taking on the task and showing they can do a good job. This can be a developmental tool for you to use, and the projects or opportunities you offer to others can be presented in the frame of “Here is something that came to me that I think would be a great opportunity for you, and I know you’ll do a great job, so I wanted to offer it to you first.” Using respectful delegation and task sharing in this way can be a wonderful leadership tool, but be careful not to overload your reports or your colleagues!

By being strategic about taking on more, creating options for getting the work done when you say no, and using delegation as a leadership tool, you can protect your time and make sure you stay out of the “overwhelm zone.” Remember, it is better to do some things very well than a number of things poorly.

You’ve heard the term “pity party”, haven’t you?  I’m sure you never indulge in such things, but in case it’s tempting sometime, this post is about how to leave that party and move on.  Self-pity is such an easy thing to engage in;  it’s easy to convince yourself that “no one understands how I feel” or that “because I feel it it must be meaningful and something to act on.”  Often it is true that if you are feeling strongly about something in your life that you should step back, look at it, and see if there is some action you can take to resolve the issue at the core of your feelings-  such cases are not “pity parties” at all.  Here are a couple of examples of “pity parties” I’ve been invited to lately by clients:

#1:  “I invite friends out and work to keep in touch with them, but they don’t reciprocate!  I had Susan and her boyfriend over for dinner a couple of months ago, and they said they wanted to invite me over, but they never did it.  What’s wrong with me?  I know they went to the theater with Jack and Steve a few weeks ago, but they never called me.  The same thing happened with Richard;  I called him to go to lunch a while back and he was busy.  He said he’d call me back when he could go, but he never did.  I used to see all these people more often, but now it seems like they just don’t have time for me.  Of course Susan just got a new job where she’s traveling all the time and Richard’s Dad is really sick and he’s busy with that, but why can’t they follow through on our friendship?  What did I do wrong and why doesn’t anyone like me?”

#2:  “I know I’ve been looking for a job like this for a long time, but you know, now that I look at it, I’m really not perfect for it.  I know I can do, like, half of what they want, but the other half is stuff I’ve not done much of yet.  It’s true that I’m getting the experience to do those things through the training I’m in now, but what if I’m not qualified for this job now?  What will they think if I don’t have all the pieces they want?  Maybe I should just not apply.  If I’m not a perfect fit, I should not apply-  I can just keep waiting until the “right” job comes along.  Sure I’ve been out of work for a while, but it just makes me so nervous thinking about this job that even though I really want the job, I’ll think I’ll just not apply.”

These are pity parties because each one focuses on thought patterns that are toxic and not worthwhile.  In fact, each thought pattern, if you allow yourself to indulge in it, will create a cycle of negative self-esteem-sapping crap that will drag you even further down.  It’s true in #1 that is stinks that friends do not reciprocate as you might want them to, and that this does not feel good.  The fact is, however, that people’s failure to follow through on things like this or to lose touch with friends over time is often not a result of something that is “wrong” with the person in question-  it’s far more likely to be mere benign neglect.  As our lives progress as adults, the pressures on our time become greater through work, being parents, dealing with illness (ours or others), among other things.   The fact is that the best of intentions regarding social interactions are often lost in a mass of “have tos” and fall to the bottom of the pile.  The “pity partier” chooses to decide that they are personally responsible for this lack of follow-through;  this is really egocentric and self-indulgent, and unless the person is really a jerk, it is unlikely that they really have done anything to influence the lack of reciprocated invitations.  Choosing to wallow in worries about “why so-and-so does not call me to go out like they did before we both had kids” is really a total waste of time and energy.  The solution is pretty simple.  You cannot really know why thing have not gone the way you think they should have with these relationships, and you’ll never know for sure.  You can stew and ruminate and be mad inside all you like, but it will only negatively affect you.  The folks you’re upset about are, very likely, simply living their own lives rather than intentionally snubbing you.  If you can get to the point where you can extend invitations to friends and enjoy that time with them without “keeping score” of whether you get a return invitation in some timeframe, you’ll increase your quality of life and unload some really negative thinking. 

In #2, it’s a pity party because you’re talking yourself out of trying something that could have a big payoff.  Sure, it might not work out, and you’re not “perfect” for the job, but what do you lose by trying anyway?  When you’re trying to do something different, that’s scary for sure, but you still have to *do* something-  inertia and fear are way worse than taking a chance and having it not work out.  This is a scenario when you have to quit whining and just go for it!  To do so, you’ll need to concentrate, as in #1 above, on the positive and the things that *do* happen and that you *do* bring to the table instead of how you’re not exactly the ideal candidate.  Soldier through, put your best foot forward, and TRY!  Walk away from the pity party and make the best out of your situation instead of wallowing in what you think might behind someone’s behavior, what might happen if you apply for that job, and what might happen if things don’t work out as planned.  Another way to think about this is to stop worrying about the “mights” and put your energy into the “cans”.  The power of positive thinking can really make it easier to leave the pity party next time you’re tempted to attend one.