Integrate!

Does it sound easy? Coaching often starts with the idea that you already have what you need. You just need to bring it to the surface. We give this names like 'strengths-based coaching' and 'positive psychology' and it can sound both impossible and impossibly easy. It's easy like coal mining is easy.  I'm writing this from the Maritimes, just across the Strait from Cape Breton Island.  Maybe you've heard this anthem for coal miners, Working Man , by Rita McNeill. It's a great song anywhere but it means a little more out here. © Can Stock Photo / tomas1111 It's true that committing to your goals means committing to finding the strengths and resources that will allow you to achieve them. Digging for resources gets great results: but it's not always easy. Sometimes it is back-breaking, frightening, risky work. The best resources are often attached to your darkest experiences (the ones you overcame so that you can set goals today). If you ex...

I really enjoy sitting down with a flight of beverages and doing a tasting. It doesn’t matter to me if I’m tasting wine or beer or scotch. I love the activity of responding and balancing choices and noticing how what comes before or after changes my perception of a particular sip. But knowing what I know from both research and personal experience, I am cautious about generalizing my evaluation based on just a small sample. Once we needed to buy new chairs for the boardroom at our office. We put a line of about ten different chairs out and people sat in each one in turn and voted on their favourites. We bought the favourites and discovered that sitting in a chair for just a few minutes is very different than sitting in the same chair for several hours. We tested, but we didn’t get a reliable result. When I was in grade 1, I took some tests as a demo for teachers who had to learn to administer them. They asked me what I would like to do while the rest of the class took the t...

You might not think that you have an energy budget, but you do. Whether you call it energy or willpower or discipline or motivation, something drives you and sometimes, you run out of it. Whatever you call it, energy is both a physical reality and an emotional one. And either you manage it, or it will manage you. Here are three ways to think about your day: I do things when they are scheduled. I do things when I feel up to them. I go with the flow. Which of these does the best job of matching your energy to meeting your goals for the day? Probably none of them work very well. You're using energy but not necessarily generating enough so that you have the supply you need when you need it. You're probably either putting off stuff that needs to be done, or frustrated by having more energy than you need for some kinds of tasks. © Can Stock Photo / Ig0rZh Here's a better idea. Think about your day and ask these three questions: When do I have the most energ...