Coaching is not an exact science but rather an art form. Life and business coaching have come increasingly into vogue in the past decade and the benefits that arise from such coaching are derived from the skill of the coach and his or her ability to develop and ask well-targeted questions that open up new possibilities for the client.

The first person you communicate with is yourself. To improve your life, you must start by improving your communication with yourself. Many people are unable to do this without some help and hence the evolution of the Life Coach, who has a major part to play in helping individuals communicate better with themselves.

The quality of your life flows from the quality of your communication. The quality of your communication determines the results you get. If you wish to improve your life, or the life of a client, you must improve the results you achieve. How do you improve the results? You do this by improving your communication. How do you improve your communication? You do this by improving the questions you ask of yourself or your client.

If you were to consider the following question what would your answer be? “What is the one thing I could do, that if I did it, would improve my life going forward?”

This question seems simple yet it is very difficult for some people to answer. To help people get beyond this, the writer has developed a set of effective questions to overcome this difficulty.

The questioning technique goes under the acronym “I GROW SMART”.

I stands for Issue Identification

G stands for Goal Setting

R stands for Reality Check

O stands for Options

W stands for Will to Execute

S stands for a simple Specific statement

M stands for Meaningful, measurable and met with determination

A stands for Achievable from the client’s perspective and includes specific Actions

R stands for Realistic and within the capabilities of the individual

T stands for Timeframe with an agreed date and time of completion

This very famous quote personifies the role and challenges facing all Life Coaches: “In oneself lies the whole world, and if you know how to look and learn, then the door is there and the key is in your head. Nobody on earth can give you either that key or the door to open, except yourself.” Krishnamurti

What this quote is saying, is that the answers are within the person. The difficulty is in fact in getting the answers out of the person. Asking effective questions will release the valve that allows the answers to flow from the client in a voyage of self discovery.

You, the coach are simply the conduit that facilitates this expunging of self-knowledge by your client

and ultimately the garnering of life changing focus and self actualization. Questions are the keys to helping yourself and helping other people explore answers and get successful outcomes.

Everybody is talking about coaching these days, but what does it mean? Isn’t it what football managers do? Well it might be, but these days football managers seem to have an army of separate defence coaches goalkeeping coaches and so on, so that’s not a helpful comparison. Perhaps you’ve seen a Life Coach on daytime TV or read a life coaching, self-help type book. There might be a useful definition to be extrapolated from life coaching, but in a business context we’ve rarely the time or the expertise to delve into personal, lifestyle issues. Becoming a manager who coaches must require us to use coaching in a very different context.
Before we can begin to develop our coaching skills we must have a clear understanding of precisely what coaching is, but this is not as easy as it may seem. Coaching is an emerging area of Human Resource Development (HRD), it draws upon a very wide range of influences from psychotherapy to sport and is continually evolving. We must arrive at a working definition which helps you to recognize exactly what coaching is and what it isn’t and how you can weave coaching into your existing set of management skills.
I will not be inviting you to discard what you already know about managing people, but I do hope to offer concepts and techniques that give you fresh options and new ideas when things seem difficult or the going gets tough. Similarly, I hope to illustrate how you can take your team’s development to new heights, in the words of one of my course participants:
“I’ve turned to coaching because I’ve taught them all I know, but I know they’re still capable of more”
Coaching defined
My little Collins English Dictionary defines the verb to coach as ‘to instruct by private tutoring, to instruct and train, to act as a coach’. This is too loose a definition to be useful, and is contaminated by references to training and instructing which might prove confusing as we’ll see later on.
Let’s instead turn to a couple of well known writers in the coaching field for their views:
“Unlocking a person’s potential to maximise their performance” John Whitmore
From this definition we can see that coaching is an activity designed to help improve someone else’s performance. A comparison can be drawn with the world of sport, where coaches try to get the best out of their team without actually being on the field of play. In modern organizations, coaching must also involve turning work situations into learning opportunities as this is increasingly seen as an important part of what it is to manage.
“Developing a person’s skills and knowledge so that their job performance improves, hopefully leading to achievement of organizational objectives. It targets high performance and improvement at work, although it may have an impact on an individual’s private life. It usually lasts for a short period and focuses on specific skills and goals” Jessica Jarvis
Some definitions suggest that coaching is purely the support and guidance provided for individuals to enable them to apply their existing skills more effectively and thus improve their job performance at work, but most include the learning theme by suggesting that coaching aims to enhance the performance and learning ability of people at the same time. A good number of definitions cite techniques such as motivation, effective questioning and deliberately matching our management style to the coachee’s (person being coached) readiness to perform a particular task. We can conclude that coaching is based on helping coachees to help themselves, but that it does not rely on a one-way flow of telling and instructing.
It appears that coaching is a means of systematically increasing the capability and performance of people at work by exposing them to work based tasks or experiences that will provide relevant learning opportunities, and ensuring that this learning is available to them later on. It is about performing and learning.
As far as the learning part is concerned coaching is very different from teaching or instructing. The coach encourages people to learn for themselves; the coach usually takes a ‘back seat’ role, while still being able to give guidance and help when people really need it. Coaches help their teams to regularly review experiences so that they understand what has been learned.
It seems there is no universally accepted definition of the term coaching and, as described below, when it is placed alongside other ways of developing people an exact definition becomes even trickier.
However, a synthesis of the numerous definitions out there identifies three elements that can constitute a working definition for further exploration:
Coach and coachee establish a relationship based on trust that has the intention of improving the coachee’s performance at work
Coaching thus becomes a process that is centered on the coachee but focused on performance
Coaching is a learnt skill and an essential element of the managerial role in these changing times

If you look up “clinically proven process for depression” on any search engine (be sure to include the quotes as this will eliminate the medication sites) you will find the only clinically proven process for depression just as you would have ten years ago. The majority of people who suffer from this debilitating disorder have been so programmed with the use of medication for depression that a process that actually fixes the problem at the source has been all but ignored since its introduction into psychiatric care in 1990.

Depression is the primary symptom for almost all behavior disorders. Go to a psychiatrist or psychologist with symptoms of depression and you have just signed up for a prescription for an anti depression medication, many of which are linked to suicide. Without question this is the most extreme example of attacking the body to try and change the mind. This is not to say that a prescription to an antidepressant should never be done. If there is a clinically proven process for depression does it make any sense to make this the first step.

In May 2007, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommended a new warning label for all antidepressant medications. The current “black box” label includes a warning about the increased risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in children and adolescents. The FDA wants to expand this warning to include young adults from ages 18 to 24. Children and young adults should also be monitored for the emergence of agitation, irritability, and unusual changes in behavior, as these symptoms can indicate the depression is getting worse. The risk of suicide is particularly great during the first one to two months of treatment. Does medication make any sense with this type of warning especially when there is a clinically proven process for depression that gets to the very root of the problem?

Everyone can agree that your health and well-being is dependent on your doctor’s expertise, so it’s important to choose the physician, psychologist or psychiatrist who is best qualified. What does the best qualified mean in regard to your mental health? In terms of the only clinically proven process for depression it means beginning with an answer to the most fundamental question about the state of depression or any emotional state and that is: “What brings about an emotional state and or behavior?” If your physician, psychologist or psychiatrist cannot answer this question how qualified are they? The answer is simple. If they cannot answer this question they are guessing, this is why medication for depression is so widely prescribed. The reality is there is not a physician, psychologist or psychiatrist who can answer this question because none of these groups even asks the question. You simply cannot fix it if you do not know how it works and you do not know how it works if you cannot answer the question.

There is complacency if not outright resistance within the community of psychology toward this clinically proven process. The first study of this process in 1992 has had virtually no impact on how depression was treated then or now. The medical and mental health communities have all but ignored it and continue with dispersing medication with a seemingly high tolerance if not acceptance toward people who commit suicide while depressed or while on depression medication.

The most disturbing suicide statistics of late are the average of eighteen military personnel who are committing suicide every day as reported by NBC on December 13, 2007. NBC also reported that 20% of active duty soldiers are reporting serious mental health problems including depression and post traumatic stress. All the while the medical and mental health communities are content with not even posing the question that will lead to a resolution to this problem and that is: “What brings about an emotional state or what determines human behavior?”

Question 15 of the clinical study was: Do you have thoughts that life is not worth living and you would be better off dead? There was a 95.7 percent improvement in regard to this question and no one was prescreened for depression before the study.

The hope here is that people who have a friend, relative, child or know someone in the military who can be helped by the only clinically proven process for depression will now take action on their own.

We all dream of a better life, a happier tomorrow, a brighter future. Today we live in a world which is in a chaotic state. Everyday in the news, we hear only of calamities, bad news, etc which are happening all around our planet. Hearing these sorts of things now appears normal to us but in reality, it is not! Even our lives are confused. We are no longer living, we are simply existing. That is not the way life should be and we human beings are not meant to live such lives. We deserve better, happier and more fulfilling lives. This is our birthright and this is what we are here for. For most of us, this seems impossible. We are so used to live our lives by default that having it all in life seems too good to be true. Yet, this is possible through appropriate life coaching and right application of the law of attraction. We all deserve and are meant to live our best possible life. We can and we must all become actors of our lives instead of being mere spectators.

 

In all parts of the world, people have become very well off on the material level. We can afford most of the things that we want but we no longer know how to live and how to enjoy simple pleasures of life. Our educational system has provided us with all appropriate knowledge, academic qualifications and skills that enable us to earn a living but they do not provide us with the most important thing of all: “How to really live”. That’s where life coaching becomes very important today. It shows us how to become masters of our lives and provides us with all the appropriate guidance and tools to make our lives a masterpiece.

 

Life coaching is for any of us who wants to get back on track in any area of life. We all have problems and we all want to eliminate these problems and live happier and more fulfilled lives. Law of attraction coaching is the right tool which will allow us to get from where we are to where we want to be. However, it is not a magic formula. Your life coach acts as a “way shower” and is here to guide you step by step, but the real work lies on you. You need to have a real determination to change and a very strong will power.

 

Wonderful outcomes are normally achieved most of the time with life coaching and many people experience life changing results. Whether you are finding it difficult to attract the right partner, the right career, more abundance and prosperity, more peace of mind, more success or want to achieve the right balance between personal and professional life, your life coach has all the tools at hand to help you achieve your goal.

 

Some of us find it very difficult to manifest the things that we want because of our limiting beliefs which are most of the time self-imposed or imposed on us by our family, our friends, the environment we live in, etc and these limiting beliefs are stuck in our subconscious minds. The aim of life coaching is to detect your limiting beliefs through right questioning and other powerful techniques and then help you eliminate them and replace them by more positive ones. Once the blocks are eliminated, you can start attracting the things that you really want and live your life by design.

 

We all want to live in a better and happier world and we all dream of a better future for ourselves and our children. It is high time for all of us to really take charge of our lives and live the best possible life we are designed to. In this way, we will be able to positively impact on our family, our environment and on the world at large. The change must begin with each one of us and the right time to change is NOW. As Mahatma Gandhi rightly said “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

 

The Purpose of Life – Fire Heart Bliss

The true purpose of life is to achieve union with our fundamental enlightened nature. In order to do this we have to become spiritual and to begin a spiritual path which can be part of the life coach path. Before everyone runs away please understand that spirituality, in truth, has nothing to do with religion. Spirituality is about experience and religion is about the organisation of that experience.

Right now in the United States 100 out 150 medical schools have a spirituality and medicine program. This movement will get stronger over time to encompass all of medicine.

Material Superstition

Despite creating a society that celebrates materialism to the highest degree, we have alternatives open to us if we would only reach out. All traditions have spiritual teachings and in many cities there are groups who meet to practice these systems that we can check out. But try not to start one path only to hop to another. This is quite like leaving your elephant at home and tracking his footprints in the forest. Knowing just one path you will accomplish or at the very least have an understanding of them all.

When we start wanting to run away, be deceptive, tell lies, or put on a mask, we need to walk right into our fears, sit down and talk to them until they become our friends. This process is accepted as part of the unfolding journey. Follow the path that inspires you most as you will follow this to its conclusion – freedom from suffering.

The only way to know that you have your own mind is to change it every once and a while. By changing your inner attitude you can change your outer reality and that is a fact.

www.oliverray.ca

Change Is Life

At one time or another we have all wanted to change; job, partner, house, even an uncomfortable feeling. We have wanted to stop smoking and loose weight. You may have even written that resolution down and stuck it on the fridge, bought the books on how to stop smoking and listened to the tapes to learn relaxation. You even told your friends what you were doing.

After a couple of days weeks or months the books were never read, tapes somewhere in your house and your friends……well, if they were good ones they didn’t bring it up. Despite your best intentions and real desire to be free or fitter or slimmer or saner, it didn’t work. Perhaps you had great success only to watch it all slide away after a couple of weeks like a cliff face falling into the sea. To make matters worse, if you redoubled your efforts for your transformation, the more elusive, frustrating and hair loss making (from pulling) it became.

So we look around and change is happening everywhere to everyone or so the marketing ads depict. New products are being rolled out everyday, communication is even faster these days and we now have faceless banks. Faceless banks!? We now have to be in continual training with our jobs and at night it would be great if we took an extra adult education course. Pressure, pressure, pressure!

Seeing all this change and watching other people make it and surpass our efforts we wonder will we ever make the grade and bring what we want into being.

Change Is Easy – Keep Letting Go

Surprisingly, change is easy and the good news is that you have been changing all the time despite your best intentions and tripping over on the treadmill. You started as a baby and look at you now. You have been growing and changing all along. You preferences for food have been changing all the way – one year peanut butter the next jam. Your interests have even changed, that computer that you swore that you would never touch is now your virtual mailbox to the information superhighway and to keep in contact with loved ones all over the world. You stopped eating a certain food and started wearing another style. There are things that you changed easily. Hell, you did’nt even notice until someone else pointed it out.

Any effective method of change has to explain why we sometimes have an incredibly difficult time changing and make use of absolute ease with which we sometimes do. If you think about it change happens in an instant!

Maybe you sat in front of the tv for years and then started an exercise program, one day you felt frightened in front of strangers and then it suddenly stopped, you smoked for years and then put the cigarette out forever. You could have even worried about it for week’s months and years – then it suddenly changed.

When we know how to do something it should be as easy as if we are freewheeling down a hill. When we turn the key in the ignition of the car the engine starts, when you turn the radio on it works. So isn’t it one of the most bizarre things about human life that successful personal change is largely judged by how difficult, painful, long and struggle filled it is. Forget the triumph of good over evil in Lord of the Rings – look at me instead and as the old adage goes, “No Pain No Gain”.

As if in life the more pain the better and in some cases a life of pain? Well if that was the case we would all be seeking pain out and not be spending every living moment avoiding it. If that were true we would all still be walking everywhere, writing with rocks, and sending smoke signals across the glens.

Pain has one redeeming factor it indicates that it is time to change. If pain is the result it signals that we are using a poor approach. Quintessentially speaking, lengthy struggle without success is a sign that what we are doing is not working. It’s time to see that pain, struggle, suffering, and waiting are signs that its time for another path.

Imagine what it would be like to have the complete operating manual for your brain. No need, here it is the outline or at least a metaphor of such.

The Mind Computer

Mind boffins have seen that if our brains are the computer then our thinking, beliefs and borrowed notions like the one above are how it runs and in some cases not run. Yes I agree electrical explosions, clakety clang and overall meltdown…. sooner or later.

But if you up grade the software you have a smoother, swifter, sleeker, trimmer, more energy efficient, humming machine anticipating the next task.

Seeing change in this light goes a long way to demonstrating how difficult change sometimes becomes because of the obsolete software. No matter how much we want, wish, hope, demand, verbalise, talk about change, or by entering the same old instructions and pushing the enter button – essentially nothing happens.

If a computer sales person told you that you needed a different computer for each software program you’d say no way. In fact we won’t repeat what you would say.

Yet this is what people do to themselves all the time. Although they are the personification of human excellence in; selling, communicating, problem solving, and after a while they think to themselves this is what I am good at. The dreaded comfort zone that has no comfort apart from the illusion of such that can keep you imprisoned for years within its boundaries arises. People believe or use the misunderstanding that they need a different computer for every piece of software.

Same computer for all software programmes. If your computer could only do word processing and not spreadsheets you would have it checked out straight away. But people make all sorts of excuses to stay in this state, they don’t have the skills, astrological signs and if like me you keep pushing the reality of change and success  you will hear more and ludicrous excuses justifying what can only be described as – inertia!

Here are the excuses to your meaningful life.

The Exuses Beauty Parade.

Blood type, my parents never loved me, only at my pace, bad memory, more than I can do, distraction, I need to drink, that’s just me, that’s just life and no money. As if that stopped Ms J K Rowling? In fact I am going to do nothing until my entire extended family, The Dali Lama and The Pope come with the three wise men go down on their knees and beg me to live my life.

The limitations in a computer are not in the hardware they are in the software. To change we need to first change the way that we are designed to change. Lions see things upside down, dogs see things black and white, birds see things in 360 degrees and human beings see things in billions of different ways. The jungle of the Amazon is deep and thick and unsurpassable but the jungle of our thoughts and beliefs are even more vast and overgrown.

But in order to change with as little pain and failure as possible, begin by seeing yourself as a non-smoker, slimmer, saner, and fitter person and all of the positive feelings that gives you. Start moving towards your ideal. Start acting as if you are already there. Put positive behaviours into action.

Association and Disassociation

This is the key to unlock all of your potential. Imagine for a minute that you are in a roller coaster at the fun fair. You are in the ride up and down, all around. Feel all the feelings associated with that even the image of your fingers holding onto the rail and butterfly’s in your stomach. Now after this, imagine watching yourself from a distance note how you are feeling is it as intense as the other scenario. You will find that it is not.

This is called association and disassociation. Association when you are in the hot seat and disassociated watching from afar. Imagine applying it to depression and dissociating it from the experience and associating to an experience that makes you happy and fulfilled. Then using “association” to move more towards the feelings of being slim, healthy, fit and positive with an enhanced physique.

The problem with change is falling between the two stools once you have the techniques you have the plank to walk across to your goal.

Stinking Thinking

You have heard of dental hygiene but have you heard or even paid attention to your mental hygiene lately? The experts say that on average a person has over 70,000 thoughts a day. Now if you are feeling negative how much of those thoughts will be negative? The thoughts you are thinking and actions you are making bring about what is happening in your life. Who you are is as result of what you have been and who you will be is a result of what you do now.

The Council Of Everybody

There is not a person who is alive that does not have an “everybody” committee that in most cases stops them from revealing their human excellence because of what “everybody” would say. I often ask my clients to look at who is on this council and in many cases we pass a vote of no confidence and sack the lot. My clients often go on to appoint amazing people to the Ministry of Everybody. Madonna is in charge of their social lives, Anthony Robbins minister without portfolio, Dr Phil dealing with the family, Kylie for feeling the fear and doing it anyway, the list is endless. The idea is what your life would be like if they were on the organising committee. This process may sound simple but in practice I have seen people move mountains quite literally with this exercise. I have used extreme examples but imagine if you sacked the council you have and choose rather than ‘randomly aquire’ the new ones.

Tell the Truth and Shame the Denial

Unlike what most people think “denial” is not a river in Egypt. Denial in extreme situations is a coping mechanism for situations you can’t get out of like being the partner of an active alcoholic, a kind of shutting down or coping mechanism. Accepting what you don’t want and compromising yourself and ultimately your life is not in your best interests, or for the people around you. From my experience both professionally and personally, denial is something that nobody can afford  – no matter who they are or what they have. An alcoholic dives into the bottle, you dive after them to save, no one if left to raise the kids. Don’t tell yourself you stay for their sake. Just not true.

Original Love Not Original Sin

My belief and its mine – take it or leave it – is that the majority of us are born with original love. People who are imbued with this primary way of being are less stressed, easy to be around and are also relaxing to be with. They are also less defensive and they have an understanding of basic goodness. If you struggle with the above then its time to address your low self esteem.

Be your own Best Friend

If you do not have faith in the wave how can you have faith in the ocean? You are the best friend and supporter that you will ever have. People come and go in your life but you stay. If you do not like and support yourself you are missing out on your greatest safety net. The resources and potential you have when you are working for and with yourself rather than against is far too long to elaborate here. The benefits are obvious of stopping the inner civil war – peace being one.

Comfort Zone Dis-ease

The whole idea of a comfort zone is that you stay within it and don’t come out. The territory outside that boundary is an infinite adventure park where we learn by trial and error. If your self-esteem is low you will be confined exclusively to your comfort zone. You will not have the supplies to explore the adventure zone and hike to the position of your dream. If you come from a dysfunctional background you will not step outside for fear of being shot by the emotional snipers with their bullets of negativity. Armour yourself with healthy amounts of self esteem and bullet proof dreams. So then no matter what the ‘black abbots’ of cynacism and jealousy throw at you they loose.

The Alchemy of Pain to Pleasure.

In order to be a great alchemist we have to transform a base metal into gold. We will presume that the more of the base metal there is the more the gold and therefore the more disastrous the situation the better result will be achieved. Who you think you are is partly a program. Many hypnotherapy friends of mine tell me that often what their clients and the public at large call hypnosis, is in fact de-hypnosis. So if we use the understanding that your blocks for change may indeed not be your real beliefs, this awareness can help the process significantly and give you the air to breath and space to explore what you can actually do. You can remove the cloaks of other people’s opinions that hold you back.

Ultimately, people with good self esteem and healthy emotions will learn new things and take risks. The closer that you get to this state and enhance it as much and as regularly as possible the more success you will have making the changes that you want to. It has been said that 96% of the population works for 4% of the population and that 4% do something very simple that makes all the difference – they write down and regularly review what they want to achieve.

Make An Appointment With Freedom

If you like what you heard and want some more why not book sessions with me. The minimum number is six. We can start together to get you life on track and before its too late. Death is real. In fact we are dying all the time. Yesterday, the past is gone. The future is down to what you do now.

Its up to you…..

Life, as it always has been, is full of complexities and confusions. Problems keep on knocking on our doors and we find ourselves helpless and hopeless every now and then. Our struggle to find success and happiness becomes even more difficult. We cannot simply tell where we are going or how we are going to end because the road ahead is bleak. Life’s difficulties have turned people to look for solutions on how they can ease their burdens. Some attend spiritual coaching programs and some attend self-uplifting seminars hoping they could find answers to finding real success and happiness. I have met a lot of people who turned to personal coaching and they have been so happy they have found one. What is personal coaching anyway? Can it provide the solution to all the frustrations and anxieties in the world?Personal coaching is a service being offered by people who have discovered the answers to more positive results pertaining to success and happiness. But we all have our own definition of success and happiness, the things that make you happy might not apply to mine, therefore each coaching method needs a different and unique approach that only suits one individual. Personal life coaches and spiritual coaching guides you and shows you how to look at life in a different perspective with a better sense of purpose. Sometimes, we do not know that we are striving for something that is senseless and only someone like an experienced motivator such a personal life coach can open our eyes to what we do not see, and these things are what really matters in life. They help us see meaning in life that we often miss because we are still too blind or too busy to see it.Our thoughts and our visions are often clouded because of too many problems that we encounter in life. Religion used to give humanity the physical strength that they need through the help of their faith, but unfortunately, religion itself has lost its hold to the spiritual side of its members because members themselves cannot find the time to attend mass or services because of the busy lifestyles that most people lead. Work has to come first before anything else because there are just too many bills to pay and lots of debts to settle. The busy world we live in is also one reason why we have a hard time in resolving some of the personal issues we have in life. It gives us all the more reason to undergo a spiritual coaching.Getting personal coaching does not only guide you towards making better decisions in your daily life but it will also revive your faith and hope that has been weakened by life’s many frustrations and problems, and getting spiritual coaching has been made more available for us through the internet. It paves the way to regular online communication with your personal coach at least a few minutes every day when you find yourself in a situation you just can’t get out of. With this said, each of us indeed need personal coaching and spiritual coaching which can perfectly fit our busy schedules. It can be the key or the missing puzzle towards a more satisfying life.For more information contact: Jacqueline Pigdon, Australia’s No.1 Existentialist Spiritual Coach T: +61 404 362 379 E: jacqueline@jinalife.com

What is Life Coaching?
In my opinion, life coaching aims to help you achieve clarity and confidence to work through issues that are holding you back from enjoying a challenging and harmonious life. Life coaching is not about making simplistic judgments about someone’s life and telling that person how they ought to live it. The majority of coaches set out to fix what is wrong with people. I don’t believe in that approach at all.
Personal experience and social science research have shown that people are the sum of their genes, their cumulative experiences and the circumstances in which they live their lives. I believe, therefore, that successful personal development of people has to be based on an understanding of all these factors and not just focus on superficial
The life coaching process is the only human improvement process that focuses completely on you! Life coaches are equal partners who assist you to improve and grow as a person as the means to achieve your goals.
Life coaches assist you to become the World’s Leading Expert on YOU! They can also assist you to execute the actions necessary to achieve your goals. You will have virtual control over the results you achieve through coaching, because you set the coaching goals, and the whole process assures that you will achieve them.
As far as I am concerned, effective, authentic coaching is based on the following five principles:
i) a shared feeling of trust and empathy between client and mentor;
ii) a relationship of equality between client and mentor;
iii) a desire on the client’s part to focus on the future, while acknowledging the effects of the past;
iv) a willingness by the client to work through challenging issues towards empowerment, self-confidence and a happier, more productive life; and
v) a belief in people’s ability to accept themselves and yet make changes that will improve their lives.
Life coaching, or personal coaching – different terms are used – is effective for all situations, whether in personal life, career, sales or corporate and business life. But whatever term you prefer to use, coaching is different different to traditional training.
Coaching draws out rather than puts in. It develops rather than imposes. It reflects rather than directs.
Effective personal development is a form of change facilitation -it enables people, rather than trains them. Personal mentoring is reactive and flexible – it allows for personal transition on an individual basis. It makes no assumptions – it’s not judgemental, nor is it prescriptive or instructional. Empathy is central to the coaching process.
Good personal coaching seeks to help the other person’s understanding of himself or herself. The personal opinions and preferences and needs of the coach are irrelevant – good coaching is about helping other people to understand themselves, where they want to be, and helping them to get there.
In summary, coaching is a modern and rapidly growing method for helping others to improve, develop, learn new skills, find personal success, achieve aims and manage life change and personal challenges.

Energy healing, health and personal development

The human body is a very complex machine which constantly has to coordinate physical activities, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, communication with others, planning ahead, thinking about the past, looking at options, choosing opportunities etc. Living is incredibly complicated and we rarely congratulate ourselves for all those little things we do each day. In fact, we barely notice them. We take everything for granted, from the food we manage to digest to all those decisions we have to make and must get right.

Sometimes we really should just stop worrying about the past and what’s coming next and start living right here and now, in the present, aware of what the body is doing, of how people around are communicating and influencing us, and of all those choices we are about to make, from picking a lunch to making a huge career or relationship move.

Energy healing such as Reiki is based on the channeling of healing energies in the major chakras to restore balance and a normal flow of life energy in the body and in the aura. It is holistic in the sense that unlike traditional medicine, it looks at the different aspects of your being (not only the physical) and also seeks to heal the source of the condition rather than its symptom.

You don’t need to be ill to benefit from energy healing as we all have lots to deal with and we all have issues to resolve on the subconscious level. We can’t change our nature and become someone different, but we can become ALL that we truly are, without the fears, the anxiety, the limiting beliefs etc. Energy healing is about BEING ALL YOU CAN BE.

Let’s introduce some basic concepts of energy healing such as the aura, the chakras, illnesses from a holistic point of view and how energy healing works and can help you.

The aura consists of seven bodies, each of them centered on the physical body, and having its own unique frequency. They are interrelated and affect one another and therefore the person’s feelings, emotions, thoughts, behaviors, and health. A state of imbalance in one of the bodies leads to a state of imbalance in the others. The different bodies are: the etheric body, the emotional body, the mental body and a group of higher bodies usually referred to as the spiritual body.

The chakras are “Spinning Wheels of Light” (the translation of the Sanskrit word ‘chakra’). Each of these major chakras is connected to a specific energy body and to energy channels in the physical body. They are centers of activity that receive, assimilate and express life force energy. Their main function is to transform and circulate life energy to nourish the cells of the physical body as well as the light bodies. They are therefore responsible for the person’s physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual functions. They absorb and transmit energies to and from the universe, nature, celestial entities, from people, and even from things.

When one (or more) of the chakras is blocked and the energy does not flow harmoniously through them, it will result in imbalance that can be manifested in any or all areas of life, and on all levels (physical, emotional, mental, spiritual).Over time the blockages in the meridians and other natural energy channels can lead to local physical conditions or general illnesses as the body cells and organs don’t receive enough life force.

Childhood traumas, cultural conditioning, limited belief system, bad habits, physical and emotional injuries, even just lack of attention, all contribute to chakra blockage. Difficulties abound in life, for each one, we develop a coping strategy. If these difficulties persist, these coping strategies become chronic patterns, anchored in the subconscious as defense structures. It is important to recognize the blocks we carry, find and understand their source and meaning, and develop tools to heal them.

Energy healing is a SAFE, non-invasive channeling of natural energy to assist the self healing of a person at the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual levels. It is not aligned to any religion and is directed by spiritual guidance and most importantly, ultimately controlled by the subconscious of the person receiving the treatment. It can be used as complementary therapy: It complements and enhances the health care the patient receives in the hospital or from other health care providers.

The power of energy healing comes from the early identification of disruptions and disturbances at the level of energy BEFORE they can manifest in diseases and disorders. Energy healing also helps by boosting your energy field with the universal energy and by dissolving blockages and balancing chakras. This restores a better flow of energy, which enables self-healing and brings balance into your body, mind, and emotions. It is not the practitioner’s energy which does this: it is universal energy channeled and sent to your being by the practitioner. And it is your willingness to receive and integrate universal energy to create the healing that restores health and prevents illness.

When you want to be healed, you need to open yourself up to healing energy, and be ready to face your issues, only then will you be healed. Energy healing works best when you are an active partner in your healing process.

Energy can be sent anywhere and a practitioner doesn’t need to be in the same room as the patient to perform the healing. Distant healing treatments are being increasingly popular for they bring as many benefits as hands on treatments with the convenience of receiving the healing energies when and where you want.

You can find more information on this subject at www.connectinglight.com which also offers free trial for you to experience and understand remote energy transfers.

Jerome.

Obsesive compulsive disorder is prevelant in our country and has been for quite some time. The only problem is that despite all of the therapists and everything it’s still getting worse! Why is this? It’s pretty obvious, they simply don’t know how to help you. The problem is that a lot of my clients have heard their therapist tell them, “I can’t help you!” How do they think that makes you feel? It’s the worst feeling when yo have someone you look up to as a professional tell you that they cannot help you! What do you do then? So these are the things that my clients seem to face all the time. If it’s not one thing it’s another. I have have had people tell me that their doctor told them that they cannot help them either. My heart goes out to those people. What you should consider doing when it comes to obsesive compulsive disorder is to really get inside your mind and finding out what limiting beliefs are holding you back as well as what kind of false associations you are believing that are tripping you up! You should know that getting to the source of the problem is the best thing that you can do because you will be able to nip it in the bud. It’s like buying a weed killer for the weeds in your garden or driveway, the best ones are the ones that kill down to the root. That is what we are going to do here when it comes to your obsesive compulsive disorder.So what is it then that you can do so that you don’t have to worry about obsesive compulsive disorder anymore? There are a lot of things and actually way more than you could ever even think of. Some people turn to therapy, others to drugs and still others to weird alternative methods like acupuncture and diets and exercise. All of these things have their pros and cons but the main thing people often miss is the thought process. Why isn’t anyone, even the so-called experts working on the thought processes at the deepest levels? Why are they just running their patients through the same old garbage and old tactics that simply arn’t that effective anymore? Old habits die hard I guess.So here is one thing that you can do regarding your obsesive compulsive disorder. The first thing you can do is to get rid of the stressors in your life and you can identify those by how you feel when you are exposed to them, you’ll know if they are a stressor or not. The next thing that you can do is to make sure that you find someone who has had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and who has beat it, then go to them and ask them what they did, this is called modeling them and it works like a charm. In fact, this is the most effective way to get your desired result, period! I have some great OCD information for you below, enjoy!To get cutting edge techniques to beat OCD permanently click here: “obsesive compulsive disorder” Derek Soto is an ex-sufferer of OCD who teaches people how to overcome their OCD for good in a very short time using little known techniques which are usually ignored by the medical field altogether.Derek Soto also mentors people on a wide range of subjects including how to control your thinking naturally, how to defeat anxiety, phobias and how to change your thought processes so that you will be happier and live a more fulfilling life, period.

Astrology, a science to identify the celestial with the mundane things, in cognizance of this fact, had assigned gold for the Sun, silver for the Moon and so on purely on their colour similarities. Various colours have been ascribed to planets thus: Orange or Gold colour to Sun, Red for Mars, Dark Blue for Saturn, Green for Mercury, Yellow for Jupiter and so on.

Though a conclusive assessment of a person’s positive and negative qualities can not be made chiefly relying on his likes and dislikes to certain colours, yet its importance in total evaluation cannot be lightly dismissed. Realizing this aspect, the Astrologers had made frequent references to colours in their works. According to them, the wearing of red kumkum on the forehead by our Hindu women, symbolizes Mars who rules blood. A particular gem or stone is also assigned to a planet on the basis of similarity of colour. A person’s penchant towards a particular colour can be attributed to strong influences of a planet.

According to Astrology, the `colour-consciousness’ of a person can be fairly gauged by the sub-lord of Lagna, the disposition of Lagna lord and planets aspecting Lagna cusp. More than one planet reveals the modifying shades of a colour. To take an example: a Thula lagna native with sub-lord Saturn, lord of lagna posited in Kataka in the star of Saturn, would naturally prefer light blue colours since Venus in Kataka will surely dissolved the strong blue of Saturn. Now a question may arise. Will a person whose natural preference is light blue like that only hue all through life irrespective of change in circumstances and vagaries of taste? Logically the answer is that since the dasa lord is a prime factor during the period of its run, any amendment, alteration or modification in one’s choice may be traced to the dasa lord and its constellation lord. This gives a clue as to why a person who has been preferring cream and yellow colours during Jupiter dasa has slowly started liking darker shades with the advent of Saturn dasa.

Now I shall broadly study the characteristic of a few colours with reference to their respective planets:

RED (Mars): A vigorous and forceful colour depicting a man of action, adventure and boldness. More of brawn than brain. On the positive side, red-lovers are upright, bold and face the challenges of life with vigour. On the negative side, it makes them impulsive, vengeful and fool-hardy.

MAROON (Modifying shade of red): Represents strength with stamina. A colour of warmth and cooperative effort. Suffers from moody spells.

PINK (Modifying shade of red): A very popular colour especially for bedrooms, drawing rooms and lounges. Think Pink is a slogan of a Hollywood comedian. Pink shows love and willingness to help others. True pink is a delicate shade and people who respond to its vibration get easily hurt though they recover readily.

GREEN (MERCURY): Adaptable to circumstances. Both sentimental and sympathetic. Fond of companionship and inclined to take life easy. If beset by failure they try to wallow in self-sympathy and put the blame on others.

EMERALD (Modifying shade of Green): This strong green raises adaptability to the status of adventure. Emerald-lovers make the most of the opportunities coming in their way.

OLIVE (Modifying shade of green): A weak colour representing a person who shirks responsibilities and tries to find excuses. Lovers of this hue need lot of cajoling, encouragement and support to goad them into action.

BLUE (SATURN): True to the nature of its ruling planet, this hue indicates moods and sentimentality. On the positive side, blue gives some measure of devotion, a certain self-sufficiency and deep and far reaching thoughts.

NAVY BLUE (Modifying shade of blue): A dark shade of blue depicting faithfulness and constancy of purpose. Reliability trust and strength characterize this shade. (Probably that is why this colour is preferred by the Navy).

SKY BLUE : A lighter shade of blue. Lovers of sky-blue now and then descend to the depth of dejection and then rise up to the heights of cheerfulness. Even in company they some time feel lonely, and worrying over trivial seems to be a hobby with them.

VIOLET (Associated with VENUS): a SOOTHING AND HARMONIOUS COLOUR. Violent admirers often have taste towards literary, artistic and dramatic works. They are imaginative and creative. Turning fantastic into reality is their common objective. They develop a liking for mysticism. They influence others easily. On the negative side, violet-lovers assume a sort of self importance. Being blind to their own faults, they avoid criticism. They like to live in their own world of illusions and often draw self satisfaction out of it.

PURPLE (Modifying shade of Violet): High thinking, sense of superiority, Empty grandeur, are some of the traits of this royal shade.

WHITE (MOON): Often considered a symbol of purity. They are sincere and fair to others and understand others with sympathy. People who are fascinated by the vibrations of this colour often like to live an orderly life (whether they do it or not) and change their ideas to the changing times in order to keep in tune with life. On the negative side they tend to be over critical.

GRAY (Modifying colour of white): A deceptive and uncertain colour indicating persons who appear to be indifferent to circumstances but definitely a calculating and cool opportunist. Gray lovers exhibit caution often resulting in wise moves.

BLACK (RAHU & KETU): Highly formal and conventional Black vibration exhibits great understanding. Devoid of false prestige, it shows dynamism and purposefulness.

ORANGE or GOLD (SUN): Proud and self-esteemed they impress and influence others easily and become a centre of attraction. Ambition of some kind drives them along and neither love nor sentiments can distract them from their purpose. Popularity and success appeal to them very much and they will leave no stone unturned to come to limelight. On the negative side, they sometimes lack warmth and override all opposition with uncanny cunning and genius. Their conceit often narrows their outlook.

YELLOW (JUPITER): Yellow in its full bloom denotes intellectuality. It speaks of a scientific mind that overcomes ignorance. Lovers of yellow shades are often sought after for their practical wisdom and constructive counseling. They inject confidence, encouragement and cheerfulness. Having been endowed with broad vision, they plan everything on a grand scale. They are benevolent and take applause and abuses with equanimity. They also tend to develop religious and philosophical interests as they advance in age.

Having seen a panoramic view of the characteristics of colours in relation to their respective planets, I should like to submit here that an interesting horizon is awaiting fruitful researches in the field of colourology. The day is not far off when just like gem therapy, colour-therapy can be effectively developed to off-set certain mental ills and deficiencies.

Astrology, if suitable researches are made in this direction, can really offer useful suggestion based on planetary colours to infuse courage, cheer and confidence in our fellow being.