Okay don’t despair, it’s a catchy title from an interesting book by Tim Ferris.  The Four-Hour Work Week seems a bit of stretch to me, considering that I’m building a thriving coaching business, while assisting my husband in building his fly fishing education programs with his business, Rp3 Fishing Adventures and School, but a great life work balance can be achieved and found for each of us.  I can see the possibility of a 20 hour work week though!

The truth and reality is that to find a better work life balance it’s important, vitally important to be really clear on your personal vision and mission in life.  If you’re not then you need to get there, as a personal lifestyle coach part of my mission is to work with clients who are working on getting clear on their own vision and mission to life.  A personal mission statement gets you clear on whom you are and what you want to accomplish in life, if you keep your mission statement clear in your mind decisions you make everyday become easier.  Commitments you once felt obligate to keep are no longer important simply because they don’t help you meet your greater picture and because you are working towards your better life you begin to focus on what is really, truly important to you.

Tim Ferris writes about his drive to his Four-Hour work week and his book has many useful tips on ways you can begin to live your life in better balance and live a life worthy of your most important desires.  It’s not about fitting into any particular mould, each one of us has different desires dreams and goals.  One of mine and my husband’s – after my step-son graduates (in 2012), liquate everything we have purchase a second hand class “A” motor home and travel North America. The nice thing is I’m still able to do what I love, coaching fantastic clients helping them achieve their dreams, as well as enjoy life in a better balance for what works for me. While my husband gets to fly fish and educate others on the wonderful sport of fly fishing (find out about his classes here – yes it’s a plug LOL!)

To achieve such a lofty goal my husband and have downsized, reduced our expense right now, and each of us are focusing of building our businesses so we can have the necessary income to support our dream.  For right now this helps us get to our ultimate dream and in the meantime since both us have the flexibility to be homebased we can support each other and still live a balance life for us…..

What about you?  What’s your ultimate dream, how would your time be spent and balanced?  If you’re not sure sign up for my newsletter (sign up to the right)  and receive the complimentary assessment “Are you the lead or understudy to your life”, only you can determine what will work best for you, but the assistance of a coach can help to clarify your mission.

Isn’t coaching just a different form of therapy?  As a coach I get asked this question a lot but the general public and clients alike.  The answer is no, it is not.  Though both coaching and therapy have a similar path and many of the techniques used in the coaching process are similar in nature to a therapeutic approach…”therapy is about uncovering and recovering, while coaching is about discovering” (Coaching vs Psychotherapy by Patrick Williams, Choice Magazine, 2004).  To the root of it all, coaching and therapy can and often do coincide in a person’s development.  While some works on discovering who they are and how they want to live life, therapy can help to clarify what might be causing someone to repeat the same pattern over and over again and to recover from the past and move forward.  Moving forward is where the coaching process excels; it helps people get really clear on matters most to them.  While on the surface coaching and therapy have many commonalities; both support the individual, both have regular sessions with the client whether face to face or by phone and both coaching and therapy look to help the client get from where they are now to where they want to be, that is essentially though where the similarities end.

Coaching has developed from many of the early pioneers of what is now considered modern day psychotherapy, Carl Rogers wrote the book “The Client Centered Therapy” which shifted the idea of therapy to focus more on the clients ability to grow and change, this helped to frame the early stages of what has now been coined as coaching.  Coaching has blended the best techniques from the psychotherapy world with organizational and personal development training.  Tony Robbins is an example of someone who uses many of these techniques.

I’ve pulled this information from the article mentioned earlier written by Patrick Williams of the Institute for Life Coach Training, it provides an easy to view of the differences of coaching and therapy and rather than recreate the wheel….. 

As the general public learn the differences between coaching and therapy and begin to see the great benefits of using a coaching approach to their lives coaching will become a mainstream activity that most organizations and individuals will use to progress through life.  Coaching will become a catalyst towards success and will facilitate lives full of purpose and authenticity.

 _____________________________________________________________

Other articles of interest about therapy & coaching

•  Border Line – Understanding the Relationship between Coaching & Therapy  by Patrick Williams
•  Coaching vs Therapy Chart   from Coachville
• Coaching & Counselling – What is the Connection by Julie Austin
• Coaching vs Therapy – What is the Difference by Lisa Fredette

Much about being a coach is listening to our client and essentially “reading between the lines”, since much of what a coach does is over the phone an ability to be a strong active listener is very important. Recently, I discovered that interpretation of words can have a profound effect on how one reacts to a particular situation. Many people today find it easy to blame someone else for their issues, some will even blame it on the dog, people will find every opportunity to blame someone or something else before they lay the blame on themselves.

When you choose to blame someone rather take ownership of the issue you’re handing over all control of the situation to someone else. If you choose to lay blame, you’ve now decided that what has been done didn’t have anything to do with you, but at the same time the follow result or resolution will also have nothing to do with you. You lose any control in the situation or outcome and can only accept what happens. On the other hand should you decide to take responsibility for your impact in the situation you then become an active participant in the solution and in turn deciding the outcome of the situation. From there you can decide to continue to have continued participation or you can make a conscious decision to move away from the situation and live life on your terms.

Living an extraordinary life means choosing the best result for you which will lead to better living.

If you’re interested in learning more about coaching and how it can have a profound effect on your life then contact me today!

In Context magazine wrote an article in 1990 called “A Question of Lifestyle“, I learned where the term lifesytle was coined, but more than that what drove me to continue reading was the 30 or so questions asked about our lifestyle choices….some of the questions that got me thinking were:

1. If you didn’t need to work for income, what would you do with your time?
2. What is the smallest amount of money you could live on for one year?
3. What was the last thing you bought that you really didn’t need? Why did you buy it?
4. What would you estimate to be the total weight of all your possessions?
5. Where, how, and why do you travel?  What do you give to the places you visit? What do you bring home?

What about you?  Have you taken time to figure out what matters to you most, and if not when will you?

PS:  Thanks to Louise from Our Odyssey blog for guiding me to the article.

Exciting news!

I’ve just launched my first e-course.  More to come soon! 

Here’s a description of the new course and take a moment to sign up.  It’s a small investment for learning some strategies for a complete make over.

Sign up here

The New You - Strategies and Recipes for a complete makeover

You’ve seen those makeover programmes on the TV right?

Well, this is something similar!

This examines what is important to you in life, the person you would like to be, what you want to be known for, your values, beliefs and image.

After completing the course there will be no stopping you - watch out everyone!

Course content:

• Part 1: Are you happy with yourself and your lot in life?
• Part 2: What and who do you want to be in life
• Part 3: Your image and what it says about you!
• Part 4: Taking control of your life & remove the clutter!
• Part 5: Being confident with the new you
• Part 6: The new you - the WOW factor!

$49.00 and six weeks to a new you!

Sign up here

Imagination is more important that knowledge.

It might seem counter intuitive to be speaking about being selfish in an attempt to make your life better, but in reality it’s what you need to do. I look at it as a good first step. To take a word coined by Thomas Leonard call it Selfuness. Taking care of yourself and your time is an important element to ensure that you have the time to give to others. Some think that to be a nice person and to be a generous person you must always be willing to give, give, give, but unfortunately that leads to exhaustion, burn-out and potentially a variety of health issues that you would probably prefer not to have to deal with.

So here’s some easy steps for becoming Selfish or Selfulness:

1. Know what you want and so.
2. Being selfish is often a first step in getting your needs met and helping you build a reserve, allowing you to give back and be generous with others
3. Stop hanging around folks who aren’t “Selfish” - those people who build their identity on trying to “do good” all of the time. For you to be generous with others you need to take care of yourself first
4. Remove all negative thoughts around being selfish. Yes being selfish can include your ego, but this is not what this is about. Focus on your betterment to make things better for others.
5. Say no, just because you feel like it. It can be incredibly liberating once you do!

To learn more about this tool for living, check out one of these books

• The Portable Coach: 28 Sure Fire Strategies For Business And Personal Success

• Stand Up for Your Life: A Practical Step-by-Step Plan to Build Inner Confidence and Personal Power

And to close off:

“One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.”
- Mother Teresa

To introduce you to some of the elements of my coaching style I’m going to be writing a variety of articles of concepts and tools for living that I find necessary to have a successful life.  This is about living life on your terms and not someone else’s.  It’s about living up to your expectations and letting go to the nagging voices that say you aren’t doing what you’re suppose to do.  It’s about you and you living extraordinary.  In the upcoming weeks, I’ll write about key tools and concepts that will help you live extraordinary!

More details to come soon.  I will be presenting a seminar to let you find your joy!

Do you sense that you were meant to accomplish more in this life?

Are you living for others and supressing the dream you’ve always want to pursue?

Don’t have any idea of how to pursue your dream?

Are you simply living live day by day and wish there was something more?

Subscribe to my blog and you’ll be one of the first to know when my seminar is launched!

This year is your year to live extraordinary!