Change You Cannot Measure...

Not long ago, there was a flurry of personal change commitments centered around the new year. All were well intentioned, many - I'm sure - are actually being worked on. In conversation with others, one thing I found in common with personal change goals is that they all had something that could be measured. In fact, 'Goal Setting 101' says one should set a measurable goal and take specific steps to get there. The old SMART objective.

How about trying something different?

Many of us invest huge amounts of energy just trying to establish our place in society. Within the context of our social circles and relationships, there is a compulsion to make sure we are heard and validated. What price are we actually paying to satisfy our egos?

Coaching Point: How about giving up the need to be right? In many cases, right or wrong is not the issue. Just different points of view if the same thing.

The tough part is that making this change in ourselves is tough to measure, and no one but us will know we are doing it. But, oh the energy we save!

Your Next Job, Your Current Job...

A friend of mine recently changed jobs and she described her last week at her former job in a curious way - " I can't believe how much I got done in the last week!"

She described how she stayed focused and engaged in meetings, whipped through her inbox, easily discarding stuff that didn't matter, truly focused on fellow employees and her staff as she spoke with them, and....laughed a lot!

What had changed? Well, she didn't change what she did, so much as how she did it. Essentially, she changed between her ears!

Coaching Point: Work like it's your last week on the job. What will it take for you to grab the sharp end?

The Geographic Cure...

There are times when change - moving to a new city or new home, changing jobs - is the right thing at the right time. There are also times, however, when the urge for change is really the desire to run away. This desire for change is often driven by the problems that continually happen in our lives. For example, problems that happen with co-workers no matter what job we have, repeatedly getting into unhealthy relationships or simply never finishing what we start.

A move might temporarily distract us and even cure the problem for a while, simply by taking us out of the situation. The problem, however, will reappear eventually.

Any pain involved in facing our issues can be well worth the effort in the end. When we face our problems instead of avoiding them, we free our energy and transform ourselves from people who run away to people who enthusiastically run towards.

Coaching Point: The geographic cure is never permanent. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you.

Thanks to Daily Om for the inspiration.

Beyond Adrenalin...

We all have that carefully defined space called a 'comfort zone'. That's the place we most often function, and more importantly, quickly retreat to when we're not there. When you are not in your comfort zone, it's not like this map appears to show that you are off route. It's more like an inner GPS - physical and emotional sensations - that scream "Whoa! Dude! Get outta here!" Of course, no one hears the warning but you. So, now what?

Seth Godin puts it another way in his book Tribes. He believes that people move forward in their lives until they are paralyzed by fear - fear of change, fear of uncertainty, fear of looking stupid, and so on.

Colleague Steve Straus writes about the distinction between being scared and being terrified. Being scared happens all the time. Typically, we go on alert and deal with whatever got the adrenalin going. It's when we allow being scared to turn to terror that we lose our bearings, our perspective. Terror causes people to freeze in their tracks and become stuck.

Coaching Point: When you get scared to try something, use the situation to increase you focus and clarity. Become still in your mind. Recognize that the longer you stand still being scared, the more likely terror can take over.

Your Last Book...

I love to read. I always have several books on the go - novels, business books, personal interest stuff. I can move from one to the other pretty effortlessly and the whole experience just seems to merge naturally into my knowledge base.

Last week I was visiting a friend who is a resident in our hospice house. She was immersed in a novel when I got there and, when we discussed it, she shared a powerful dilemma.

"When you're dying, how do you choose which book to read?"

Wow! What a great question!

No matter who you are, you'll never live long enough to read everything. So, how do you choose what to read next? More importantly, how will you READ what you read next? There is an endless supply of books, so you'll never run out. Right?

Well, what if the book you have in your hand may be the last book you ever read? How closely will you pay attention - savor every phrase and paragraph?

Coaching Point: Perceived abundance allows us to treat things with less respect and focus than when we acknowledge true scarcity. It's in the scarcity that we discover true value.

Gardening In January...

New Year has just past - is it too early to start writing about gardening? Let's see...

My wife and I used to have a big yard and were always impressed with people who create beautiful, immaculately maintained gardens - impressed to the point that we would return home and attempt the same meticulous approach. It worked for about the first week. There we were, lost in the zen of weeding, systematically pulling out everything that didn't belong.

This lasted for about a week, unless it rained or got really hot before the week had passed. The change gave us a chance to do something more 'important' - like just about anything. In relatively short order, the gardens would be once again alive with stray grass and a variety of weeds. At this point, I reverted to my old habit of carpet bombing the garden with Round Up.

What changed? Well, for us the vision of a carefully maintained garden space was not compelling enough for us to do the daily work required to keep it there. And not compelling enough for us to hire a gardener or buy a new house!

Coaching Point: When you create a vision in your life of a 'perfect garden', make sure it is compelling enough so that you are willing to pull the new weeds out everyday.

Pimp Your Ride, Pimp Your Life...

More than any time in the year, people are motivated to change something in their lives. We call it the 'New Year Resolution'. Search the web, comb the bookstores, or check out the feature pages of the newspaper - you can find so many self improvement ideas, you'll never live long enough to even read about them all.

And...I'm sure virtually all of them will work one way or another.

Self improvement is a very good thing. I mean, that's what I help people do for my living! It's all about tapping into that unrealized potential we all have and creating process to realize it. My question is about timing. We tend to treat 'self improvement' like an event, rather than a process.

What I wonder is "why now?". It's kind of like fixing up your house to put it on the market, doing a major clean up of your apartment before moving out so you can get all your damage deposit back, or pimping up your car in hopes of getting a better trade in.

Who, exactly, are you doing this for? More importantly, what have you been putting up with that now need 'fixing'?

Coaching Point: By all means, examine your life and look for the unrealized potential. But do the work for YOU, not someone who will have no appreciation for the effort and true value of the result. Most importantly, create a process of transformation, not something tied to a point in time like new year.

Happy New Year!