groundedinpotential.com Blog

I just put the finishing touches on a fully-redesigned grounded in potential, my coaching website. Please take a look!

In coming weeks, I plan to add my newsletters and links to other websites of interest, so please check back to see my progress. Any thoughts and suggestions are welcome.

I’d like to suggest some alone time. This isn’t a punishment and, believe me, you deserve it.

If I can get a little new-agey, time on your own means time to hear your inner voice. To understand better what you’re feeling, to think through what’s happening in your life and to determine what matters most to you at a given moment.

This can be elaborate – making a ‘date’ with yourself, writing it on the calendar and planning out your day. Or it can simply be a 30 minute walk without iPod, cell phone or company. I highly recommend being outside for this. 

You could also journal for the same amount of time about topics that have been on your mind lately. For this one make sure you write for 2+ notebook pages. The first page or so is just to clear your mind, the good stuff comes after that. That idea is from The Artist’s Way.

I sometimes just lay in bed for an extra 20 minutes, awake but not getting anywhere too fast.

For some, the process of getting or giving yourself this time will be the challenge -removing other distractions, especially the need to keep yourself busy, or to serve everyone else in your life first.

Once alone time happens though, you have the ability to see things in a new light. And most of all, to enjoy your own companionship.

After seeing the Salon.com article, “Oprah’s ugly secret” by Peter Birkenhead yesterday, I had to write a rebuttal. Let me first say that I rarely watch Oprah, am not a huge fan, nor am I completely convinced that The Secret is the perfect delivery mechanism for the Law of Attraction. See my previous blog.

However, The Secret DVD and book are just that, methods of delivering a very good message. You can have more of what you want in your life.

What Peter missed in his article was the role each of us plays in making that happen. We don’t just order from the universe’s catalog of shiny and new material possessions. We first have to see our role in how we got to where we are today, and therefore our role in moving into an even better situation in the future. 

This isn’t like Dorothy clicking her heels three times to go home. It’s hard work taking responsibility for your actions and for what has happened in your life so far. It’s also going to take dedication to be grateful for what is already working in your life and to visualize more good things coming your way in the future.

The Secret is a great advertisement for life coaching, and what you get when you focus your attention on what you’re grateful for and what you really want (health, happiness, fulfillment – and material stuff too). Change can come, and can start with simply and profoundly switching your viewpoint each day from negative (that’ll never happen, why me?, I’m going to be late) to positive (I’m going to be right on time, things are working, etc.).

Coaching is one way to go from where you are now to the bigger, better version of yourself that The Secret encourages you to envision. Coaches are allies who can help you concentrate on that vision (of yourself as a millionaire for instance) and to create manageable steps to get you there.    

If The Secret introduces more people to the concept and gets them thinking more about their role in their own lives, I’m all for it. And if Oprah expands the message even further, all the better.

If you’re rethinking your new year’s resolutions, you’re not alone. Don’t give up just set! Instead, take a longer look at your original list. In this month’s newsletter (email me to receive it), I talk about how to stay on track.

Here is another exercise to evaluate if your intentions are in line with who you are:

1.  Draw a large circle on a piece of paper – this will become a pie chart - and think about all of the areas of your life. First, think about what makes up your life (I go to work/school, I walk my dog…) and then, what areas you want to bring in (want to return to church? start working out?). 

2.  Draw each area as a slice of the pie using headings such as Health/Fitness, Family, Spirituality, Career, etc.

3.  Once you have all of the slices laid out, go back to your original list of goals or resolutions and consider how they fit into this pie chart of your life.

This drawing should contain all that’s important to you right now. As a result, it makes goal setting, and goal keeping, easier. Whatever you want to bring into your life should fit effortlessly into one of the slices. Otherwise maybe it’s less important than you think (or it’s time to redraw!).

Note: this circle is important for other exercises too, so keep it handy. And let me know what you think!

I wrote previously about getting healthy in the new year. What if instead you resolve to get your finances in order.

As your coach, I’d ask:  If your checkbook was balanced, your 401(k) a thing of beauty, how would you feel? What will financial order give you?

The answer to that question is where we would start the conversation over again. The intangible thing you get (security, sense of control or accomplishment) when you succeed is what’s underneath the decisions you make.

Example: ”I want to be in control, so I’m putting a system in place to manage my money.”

In a coaching session, we may never touch on the system itself, rather we’d delve below the surface and talk about what role control plays in your life and how to use it as an ally for finding and getting what you really want.

When you know what you really want and what getting it means to you, it’s easier to set attainable goals (basically because you’ll want to achieve them)…and to set your sights higher to more fulfilling aspirations.

I believe you’re already capable of getting things done in 2007. The question is: what’s the wish, dream or goal beyond that?

It’s that time of year – new year’s resolutions. If you received my newsletter, you saw one idea for making the most of this annual activity. (Email me if you want to see it.) Taking a look back to fully complete all you’ve already accomplished makes room for the fun, new things on your horizon.

Where we left off in the newsletter was your image for what life will be like at the end of 2007. Where you’ll be, who you’ll be with, what you’ll be most proud of – a strong, lasting memory of what’s to come. Turning that image into reality this year takes breaking it down into manageable pieces that you can make part of every day. It also takes understanding why you want it in the first place: 

Let’s say you envision yourself in better shape and feeling/looking good at the end of 2007. A gym membership is a solid first step, but before you couple that with faint promises of, “I’ll get up every morning at 5:30am and run an hour on the treadmill,” consider what fitness means to you. Where are you in your life right now, and how does your health play a role? If you were more fit, how would your life change for the better?

Your answers to the big questions make your goals more real, thus more attainable. Then you’re running because you want to live to be 99, rather than because that’s what you do at the beginning of every year.

Best of luck with resolution writing…and Happy New Year!