Integrate!

What do you think of when you think of integrity? Chances are, you think of someone who walks the talk, someone who keeps their promises, someone who follows through. When you think of integrity, you think of behaving in a way that is consistent with what your best self wants. Now think of resolutions, of the promises you could make to others or yourself about how 2012 will be different from 2011.  Did a number of objections quickly spring to mind about how resolutions are different than promises and about how much of what went wrong in 2011 wasn't really within your control?  That voice makes itself heard inside my head, too. Integrity is about discovering enough of yourself so that you (and other people) can predict your responses especially when the world is outside your control.  If you think about yourself, with honesty and without judgment, you'll know that more is possible and that not everything is possible. Now ask yourself: what kind of promises could I ...

This post is about two things: looking back at three people who had a powerful, positive impact on me this year and looking out at two different ways to think about excellence.  We will pretend that this blog is about yoga (but you will know it is really about much more). After being intrigued by yoga for many, many years, 2011 was the year I began to practice.  I began to practice at a time that was troubled and stressful and difficult, and things got worse before they got better. Through the guidance of my gifted yoga teachers, I began a practice that mostly kept my head and heart and body balanced and moving forward.  So this is a shout out to Denise  and Joe   and Jesse  for their gentle, positive, persistent approach to moving me forward and bringing me back - to the yoga studio and to my better self.  Thank you. Today,  a conversation with Denise (and then with Jesse) got me thinking about what I value most about my yoga teachers. ...

One of the trickiest issues in coaching must be the problem of "making" people want what they should want.  It comes up in two ways.  One is that the person who hires the coach has a goal for the person being coached.  The other is that the person being coached has a goal that they don't entirely like or want. In both cases, the question asked is: "can you help someone become congruent about something?" Maybe. The first question is: how will you know it is safe to help someone overcome internal objections to a goal? Incongruence (feeling pulled in different directions when you think about something) is a message from your whole self to your thinking self.  The message is: "there's something not quite right here." If your whole self were always accurate, then it would be easy to say that coaches should direct people to places where they are congruent - not help them to overcome their own safety signals.  But your whole self is not always right...

As someone who works in supporting and managing change, I work with several wonderful people to support my own development and performance.  Some are advisors (they help me think through business decisions), and one is a business coach (he helps me think through how my own state impacts my business).  The other is harder to define. Kathleen Milligan  works with EFT, hypnosis, NLP and some Kathleen Milligan magic to help her clients reach inside and find what they need to behave differently.  Usually, she identifies herself as a therapist.  Usually, I call her my coach - maybe to avoid the therapy label, but mostly so that people will understand that I get tangible, practical results from my sessions with her.  Let's look at the assumptions that sit underneath the words to see what new information we can find about choosing a coach or therapist. What is a coach? The International Coaching Federation (ICF) "defines coaching as partnering with clien...