Trust that You Flow in Perfect Timing

Trust in Yourself, Trust in Timing

Carolyn Hamilton-Kuby is a coach and public speaker known for her vibrant spirit and calming presence. She is the owner of Morningstar Leadership Development in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. She shares an encouraging story of trusting in perfect timing on the International Coaching Federation Blog: http://ift.tt/1NS6UU6

Trust is the essence of relationships and is at the heart of coaching. As coaches, we establish trust environments, demonstrated in many ways—including trust in clients’ capacity and their choices in driving coaching agendas.

In “Full Catastrophe Living,” Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, addresses the Mindfulness Attitude of Trust: “In practicing mindfulness, you are practicing taking responsibility for yourself and learning to listen to and trust your own being.”

I feel that listening and trusting of my being, as a coach, are evidenced in depth of listening as well as trusting my inner sense in shifting to questioning or observing. It involves trusting my intuition regarding the question to ask, feedback to give (with permission) and timing in doing either.

Both in coaching and life, my mindfulness attitude of trust—in self and timing—has cultivated more so since the following experience: Read more

Trust is at the heart of the coaching relationship. For more information on a career as a Recovery Coach visit our programs page: http://ift.tt/25yxJER

 

Tips for Personal Efficiency

Increase Your Personal Efficiency and Make the Most of Each Day

We all have 24 hours each day. To find joy and success in our personal and professional lives, we need to use those 24 hours effectively. Are you using your time as effectively as possible? Consider how you could use your time more wisely and get more accomplished.

Tips for Efficiency at Work

Being more efficient at work will help you in your career and make your days more enjoyable and productive.

Organize your office space. When every item has a normal home, it isn’t hard to find. Spend the last few minutes of each day tidying up and laying out your priorities for the next day.

Have an up to date to-do list. You’ll get more done if you can hit the ground running when you first walk in the workplace doors. Know what you need to accomplish and have a plan already in place.

Take regular breaks. You’ll get more done over the entire day and still feel refreshed when everyone else is burning out. Push yourself to work more intently for a period of time, then take a break. You will increase your productivity and feel more refreshed.

Use a calendar management program. Having your daily tasks and meetings scheduled will help you make the most of your day. Block time for important project work, and make sure you take a lunch break.

Delegate. You can get more accomplished if you delegate tasks at work. When needed, you might even be able to delegate work to your peers if you ask nicely. Or maybe the receptionist wouldn’t mind assisting with that mail out. Be sure to get a supervisor’s permission before asking. People are valuable resources, treat them with respect.

Keep meetings to a specific agenda when possible. If you have control or influence over the meeting, make sure the purpose and agenda is clear and that you stick to it. And not every meeting has to last an hour. Spending a few minutes to prepare what needs to be discussed and sharing that information ahead of time can cut the meeting time in half.

Tips for Efficiency at Home

Get things ready the night before. Avoid packing lunches and selecting clothes in the morning. Make these things part of your evening ritual. Your mornings will be much more relaxed.

Get organized. The average person spends a lot of time looking for things at home. Car keys, the checkbook, TV remote, batteries, and bills, to name a few. You can save a lot of time by getting organized.

Put things away when you’re done. Making the house clean is a major job. Keeping it clean, instead, is much easier. Teach everyone to put things away when they’re done. If you and your family always put things back, the house can’t become cluttered. For example:

• Dirty dishes go in the sink or the dishwasher.
• Put mail in the appropriate place after sorting or opening.
• Toys go back on the shelf.
• When you take off your shoes, put them in the proper place.
• Use a pen? Put it back when you’re done.

These are just some practical tips to help you handle responsibilities efficiently and spend less time on your tasks. Creating routines in these areas help to make your day go smooth. Time is the one resource that we all have in equal amounts. The most successful people are those that make the most of the 24 hours they’re given each day. Make yours count!

Create Your Ideal Life

We all have goals, dreams and desires that fall by the wayside as we encounter the challenges and disappointments of life. But can we re-fire our desires and shift our thinking to believe for more from our lives once again? In his blog Jack Canfield takes a look at 7 tips that help us to find success, achievement and fulfillment.

We all aspire to do, be, and have great things. Yet most of us simply aren’t creating the results we want. We complain that we don’t have enough money, romance, success or joy in our lives. We point fingers and blame outside problems that “happen” to us and make life more difficult. But what we need to understand and keep at the forefront of our minds is that greatness exists in all of us. It is simply up to us to pull it out of ourselves. Regardless of personal circumstances, economic climates, and access to resources, it helps to maintain faith in the fact that we each are more powerful than we think. We all have the ability to create the life we want. We just need to learn how to do it. Is there an exact “formula”? No, but there are certain common features that successful people exhibit and that anyone can practice. They are what can jumpstart your success and attract what you want in life. You’d be hard pressed to find any high achiever who doesn’t live by the following 7 tips: Read more

Professional Recovery Coaching can be the key that unlocks potential, not only in yourself and in your practice, but in the lives of those you coach. To find out if a career in Professional Recovery Coaching is for you, set up a free Discovery Call with one of our Professional Coaches here: http://ift.tt/20xDDzn

Vitamin D – Super Nutrient: Are You Getting Enough?

Get Those Toxins Out of Your Body!

We are not safe from harmful chemicals. They are everywhere – in your food, in your car, in the air – toxins don’t need to find a way into your body, they’re already there. Scientists have found traces of hazardous toxins in umbilical cords of newborn babies! Unless we take measures to regularly remove these toxins from our bodies, they are going to keep accumulating toward one or multiple health afflictions.

Researchers Bruce Lourie and Rick Smith, through some experiments on real people including (but not limited to) themselves, found out some revealing points about detoxing.

This article from Everyday Health shares the key points of their research.

7 Detox Tips From Scientists Who Actually Tried Them

One of the realities of 2014 is that when a baby is born, he or she has already been exposed to toxic chemicals. The evidence is in umbilical cords, which research has confirmed contain pesticides, waste from burning coal and gasoline, and garbage. Even if you try to do everything right (eat organic, buy natural products, live in a cabin in the middle of the woods, etc.), you can’t avoid all of the chemicals that have become pervasive.
See full post here.

Every patient, regardless of their distress, needs a good detox routine which our recovery coaches are trained to provide. For more information on health and recovery, visit Recovery Coach Training.

10 Reasons to Engage a Coach

My daughter recently said to me, ” I feel like I have bad karma. I seem to be living under a dark cloud.” She is in college, living away from home, and has had to deal with a couple of rough spots. Nothing major, but, then again, that’s my opinion, not hers. To her, life is a bit tough right now, and she is having some difficulty dealing with recent events. There is no doubt that life can be a real bear at times. Some days, everything is really rosy, the sun is shining, things are just falling into place. It’s all flowers, strawberries, chocolate and puppies. Then on other days, thunder and lightning surround you, weeds creep into your mental garden, you are greeted by a flat tire, someone rear ends you on the expressway, you spill hot coffee on your freshly dry-cleaned outfit, or drop your keys down a sewer grate (this actually happened to my other daughter several years ago. Talk about a significantly major PITA!). It just seems like nothing is going your way, and perhaps, it will not go you way ever again. At least that’s the way it feels, anyway.

We face these and even more serious issues every day in life. Some small, some large, some huge. We usually get through these times. We manage. We get by. But sometimes, you find the going tougher than you have ever experienced. You feel like you are wading up stream, in a river of molasses. You fight against the current, swim against the tide, making little to no progress. In these times, the swirling waters threaten to pull you under. You fight to breathe, you gasp for air, you struggle to survive. It is at these times that you should consider seeking out and engaging a Coach, a mentor, a sage. Someone who can listen to and observe the difficulties you are facing, putting them into their proper perspective, and assisting you in emerging successfully out of the morass you have gotten yourself into. A trusted person that you can trust to methodically and patiently help. I can think of many good reasons to engage a coach. I will share ten of them with you now.

1. Good Coaches have experience. They have either personally gone through what you are going through, or have seen it before, time and time again. This helps immensely to cut through the haziness of a particular issue, since they typically have been there, done that, bought the T-Shirt.
2. Coaches will look at your predicament objectively and unemotionally. This allows them to strip away the bad feelings and drama that you cannot do for yourself. They look at the facts and root cause(s) of your issues. The cut to the objective chase.
3. Coaches listen really well. They make sure they understand your point of view (after all, you are the one with the problem!). They do not impose their paradigm on you. They look at things from your perspective. The walk in your shoes.
4. Coaches steer you towards thinking about great outcomes. They help you to develop a custom vision of how things should really be. This is hard for us to do by ourselves when we are wallowing in a swamp full of alligators.
5. Coaches are action oriented. After they help you develop the vision of how things are, they assist in putting together an action plan for getting there. YOUR action plan, not theirs.
6. Coaches hold you accountable for your vision, and your action plan. They ensure you maintain ownership and accountability over your issues, your vision, your plan. Without thisd accountability, you won’t stick to it. you won’t get it done.
7. Coaches tell it like it is. They don’t tell you what you WANT to hear, they say what you NEED to hear. Unfiltered. Unadulterated.
8. Coaches are ethical, confidential, and private. You can be open with them, where you may not be able to with a friend, even a good friend, or a family member. This is one of the most important attributes of a coach. You can trust a person whose profession it is to help, and to maintain confidentiality.
9. Coaches are outcome and results oriented, and they help you get there as quickly as you are willing to and can move.
10. Coaches are balanced, and help you balance. Your life may not be a bowl of cherries, but its not all gloom and doom either. They help you see, recognize, and exploit strengths, while you are working on the weaknesses.

In short, having a competent, experienced person beside you, to guide you through the complexities of life, can be a real blessing. Many executives, celebrities, and professional athletes employ coaches, to give them that edge they need to be successful. We can all use the help. If its good enough for them, why not for us?

Let me know what you think.

You can read my blog HERE, connect on Twitter HERE, LinkedIn HERE and Facebook HERE.

 

Thoughts on Being Authentic

On Being Authentic

Have there been times in your life when you felt you weren’t acting like your true self? Maybe you were unsure of a situation or were lacking the confidence to reveal who you truly are.

Whatever your reason, you chose to hide your real self. Personal concealment places us into an emotionally unhealthy cycle. First, we feel unsure of ourselves and this causes us to act even less authentic in the future.

Rather than spending time hiding from the world, you’ll flourish by revealing your true self to others. Becoming more authentic in your interactions is a worthy goal.

Here are some ways to increase your personal authenticity: 

1. Monitor your feelings closely and stay present. When you know and understand your own emotions, you’ll be less likely to behave in ways that contrast with your feelings. Mindfulness will help you tremendously in your quest to be more authentic. Stay in the moment and consider what is going on in your world in the present.
2. Give yourself time. If something happens and you’re unsure of how to react or respond, it’s okay to not react at all. Allow yourself some moments to consider the situation. If you feel pressure to respond, saying something like, “I’m not sure how to respond to that,” can be your best line of action until you’re more confident in your reaction.
3. Catch yourself being inauthentic. When you realize you’ve been less than honest in a given situation, it’s okay to say, “Wait a minute. I changed my mind,” or “Maybe I’m not as sure about this as I thought.” Remind yourself that you have permission to alter your response to anyone and anything at any time. Then, choose a route that’s more in line with how you honestly feel.
4. Notice what situations prompt you to be disingenuous. Being insincere or untruthful each time you’re around your in-laws or your supervisor, for example, will reveal where your insecurities lie. Do some self-reflection to determine why you’re behaving this way around that person or in that particular situation.
5. Be authentic with others to increase your level of confidence. The ability to be open and honest shows that you like and accept yourself and you’re self-assured. Avoid being afraid or too timid to show others who you really are. Self-confidence goes a long way!
6. Realize that others truly appreciate you when you’re authentic in behavior and comments. Think about how you feel when you’re with someone who’s consistently open with you. It feels comfortable and easy to be with someone you know you can trust. There’s no tension or guesswork involved. If you keep this information in mind, you may find it a little easier to be authentic.
7. Show care and gentleness toward others. You might be thinking, “What’s the connection between being caring and being authentic?” If you go out of your way to be polite and kind to others, it will be a natural response to be authentic with them. Once you realize that you hold their feelings in your hands, you’ll know it’s necessary to be gentle and honest with others.

When you expend a little bit of effort on relating to others truthfully and carefully, you’ll gradually find that you like yourself more. When you offer authenticity to others, it sets a wonderful example for those around you. The more authentic you are, the richer the life you’ll live.