"For the past thirty-three years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?' And whenever the answer has been 'no' for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something . . . Almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure---these things fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose." (Steve Jobs, College Dropout and CEO Apple Computer, Stanford University Commencement, 2005)
Broken dreams and lost hopes, the meaning and purpose of our existence slipping through our fingers. These are the thoroughly human experiences of every thinking man and every thinking woman. Not many of us have the clarity and the courage of Steve Jobs to look that closely at our lives. Give yourself credit: the simple fact that you are reading this demonstrates your courage and willingness to look in your mirror and at your life.
Welcome to the world of life coaching where we see dreams remade and hopes renewed and life take on new meaning and purpose. Life coaching puts you in vital contact with the power you have within you to begin to flourish wherever you are in life. You have virtually untapped power within you. With this power you can learn or relearn to begin each day with energy and enthusiasm, taking steps to make your dreams come true. You will learn or learn again how to reframe and get perspective on whatever your past experiences have been, whatever your brokenness and whatever frustrations you have endured. Life coaching operates on the premise that there is no such thing as failure: there is only education. As your dreams become realities, you come to accept and often even actually embrace past frustrations and dead ends as learning experiences that make you more consciously aware and useful in steering yourself and those you love toward the realization of your and their dreams and hopes.
One does not have to be Buddhist to accept as truth the Enlightened One's dictum that it is in the future of every man and woman to have to deal with the three human inevitables: aging, illness, and death. He finds a modern echo in Don Juan, the Yaqui Indian guru, who instructed Carlos Castaneda on the wisdom of always keeping death as a “close advisor”.
And that is where life coaching begins: with a focus on the future that we’d all rather avoid looking at-- i.e., the moment of our death. Death puts the ultimate perspective on our life. That’s, for example, where one of our business coaches told us years ago when he helped us to begin to write a business plan. My wife and I had previously never been fully self-employed—we had worked for a university, some school systems and various public and private organizations, but never solely for ourselves. We were both in our forties with two young children when we had the dream of going into business for ourselves fulltime.
It confused me at first, twenty-five years ago, when our coach/consultant prescribed for us the first step in our business plan development. He told my wife/business partner and I to write out a sentence to begin: “The principal purpose of my life and work is . . . . . " He said that we should look at the statement from the perspective of our respective "C.O.D. dates", or our "Crap Out Dates", the day of our deaths. Thinking of our wakes, what would we like to have said about us in our eulogies?
Why don’t you who are reading this try it for yourself? Write out a one-sentence statement about what is the principal purpose of your life and work. What are the principal things you would like to accomplish with your life and energy before you, like all of us, have to be brought to face the grim reaper?
If you have any unfulfilled dreams or hopes, a life coach can help you make these dreams and hopes realities, as ours have done for us over the years. (By the way, we did go on to successfully support ourselves, raise our children through college and grad school, and see them married and now successfully supporting themselves and their families through their own forms of self-employment.)
Surrender means to give up. Addiction also means to give up. This includes giving up on the best of ourselves, giving up on the power within us. This sort of talent burying, light-under-the-bushel hiding sort of depressing behavior harms us. Life coaching is a vibrant alternative.
I can help you build a new life...one day at a time. Reach out.
Please note: Life coaching, including addiction coaching, is not psychotherapy. Psychotherapy focuses on pathology and generally the past. Although I am an experienced psychotherapist, and licensed as a psychologist in California and , I do not do psychotherapy with my coaching clients. Through coaching, I have the privilege of helping normal healthy adults grow beyond themselves and move beyond all those distractions (many of which I term addictions) that keep the majority of men and women unaware and unconcerned with excellence or the attainment of dreams beyond the ordinary. It is recommeded that those with diagnosable mental disorcers see an appropriate psychotherapist for treatment. Life coaching is not a substitute for appropriate psychotherapy for such individuals.