Everyday Bliss For Women In Leadership

I spoke in my previous post about Sleepwalking - what the sages mean by "being asleep". Multitasking as a sure way to somnambulent oblivion and so on. If you truly wish to awaken inside your life, there are a few very simple things you can do without being a wise old monk or nun to begin with. For us moderns without access to a deep forest retreat or monastic cell, the following are both doable and mostly easy.

1. Read Eckhart Tolle’s works and listen to his recordings. I particularly savored his Findhorn Retreat while ill. It brought awareness to the processes of illness and enabled me to heal myself more quickly. Ill or not, it’s a classic, as is his seminal work "The Power of Now".

2. From Tolle you will learn this one simple thing: Pay Attention To The Now.

Sounds Simple.  Isn’t at first, for most modern humans.  Takes work, but gets infinitely easier.

It is however, the single most important tenet to Awakening that anyone can point you towards.

3. How to do this: just pay attention to what is around you, wherever you are. Get used to modeling these awarenesses to yourself in terms of what you see, what you hear, what you feel inside and outside your body, what you smell and if applicable, what you taste.

4. You’ll notice that your awareness fades after awhile. At first, you may only be able to keep a few seconds of awareness going. As your mind comes to the realization that you’ve dropped out of the Now, gently allow your awareness to refocus on the present moment. As the past and memories or future projections come up into your conscious awareness, allow yourself to gently slide back into the Now, as you become aware of your reminiscing.

5. Ask: what are you aware of behind yourself? In front is easy, we use our eyes. Humans have an almost over-reliance on vision. Get used to using the senses that don’t rely on vision. Skin sensation, the pressure of a breeze on your body, the temperature of a room, the energy of another person or animal passing behind you.

6. It’s fun to have a friend pass behind you at different distances. Learn from practicing easy exercises like this to calibrate exactly where other beings are in space relative to you. When you can do this, you will have Awakened that part of you that lived in caves millenia ago and knew within microns where things were in very dark places without candle nor moonshine to guide them. This is an old and valuable knowledge. And it came to those who were much more Awake than we are now.

Enjoy it.

The Present Moment - "The Now" is all the time that we ever have. It is all that is truly real, for the past once experienced is gone, and the future has not yet happened*. Now is all we truly have. May you make the most of yours….

Stay tuned for Even More Ways to Awaken inside of Life…

One of the key components to making Emotional Freedom Techniques work is a well-crafted Setup Statement, using the Choices format for ensured outcome. The Setup Statement you’ll recall is in the format:

"Even though I have this (problem), I deeply and completely accept myself"

And the "Choices" protocol adds to that: "…and I choose to…."

What I would like to help you do is to format this statement so completely and happily that your ENTIRE SYSTEM (mental, emotional, physical, spiritual) gets behind this goal and makes it an irreversable victory, a foregone conclusion.

How do we do this? By making sure the Setup statement reflects what in Neuro Linguistic Programming is called the "well formed outcome". A Well formed Outcome is based on correct ecology. This means that whatever you want - your goal - must be in synch with what your body, mind and spirit want and need. If you’re a shy, retiring sort and your goal is to become the next big rock star, you may well find yourself with an uphill battle. Ditto someone who wants to lose weight and decides they must lose a hundred pounds in three months. This just isn’t medically feasible and would in fact be dangerous. Your body and mind both are going to fight you on it.

So the first lesson in crafting correct Setup Statements is to check your own internal Ecology on the matter. Here’s how:

1. Identify the problem. Let’s say you want to lose weight and that your initial identification of this problem is "this excess fat"

2. Ask yourself to get more specific. How much fat is it? How much do you want to lose? In this case we could say "I want to lose forty pounds". This is a negative statement as it’s the same as saying "I don’t want this forty pounds".

3. We know the subconscious mind that we’re talking to responds much better to statements that are worded in the positive. Now, what is the POSITIVE side of this? Start with the phrase "I want …..". This will help formulate what you want into a goal that is more realistic to your body. In this case, "I want to weigh 130 pounds". But also, the mind hears best requests which are statements of current reality. So, state in terms that are positive and CURRENT. So - "I weigh 130 pounds".

4. But when? It could be forever, as far as the subconscious mind is concerned. So let’s take a minute to break that down. First, by time. When do you want to achieve this? Let’s say "In one year, I weigh 130 pounds"

5. This is a huge goal though, when you look at it in a lump sum! It may not seem to you to be achievable in the moment. So let’s break it down even further. If you want to lose 40 pounds in one year, you’ll need to lose 3.33 pounds per month. Just three and a third pounds! Well, you think to yourself, that sounds easy.

6. So the new , more Reasonable Goal becomes "One month from now I weigh 166.67" What’s this .67 jazz?? My mind doesn’t wrap around fractions very well! (neither do most people’s) So use terms that your mind will understand. Just round it up a little bit to four pounds. "One month from now I weigh 166 pounds" Or round it down to three pounds - whatever feels good to you inside.

(A little medical news: two pounds a week is a safe and easy amount of weight to lose…and remember, most of this in the beginning will be water weight.)

7. Now that you have the Reasonable Goal in hand, you need to look at the Setup Statement again. We have:

"Even though I weigh 170 pounds, in one month I choose to weigh 166 pounds"

While that’s great, it’s still not as full and engaging as it could be. It’s clunky and clumsy, and the Subconscious mind has gone to sleep before we get past the first six words, as the statement looks like it’s going to be a double-negative. It’s not, but the Subconscious, poor literal soul that it is, has no way of knowing that. It shuts off when grammar gets too complex.

8. Enter the power of Gratitude. This is the master key to creating and maintaining both physical and mental states out of thin air! If you’re walking around whining and moaning about how bad your life is and are suprised nothing changes - THIS is why. Adopt an "Attitude of Gratitude" (and I always throw the complementary magic of love, joy and ease into the mix) and you’ll be amazed how fast things change. Let’s take a look at this new, more ecologically-correct Setup Statement:

"I am grateful (or "I give Gratitude") that my body is joyfully, easily and healthfully creating my ideal weight of 166 pounds this month."

The Subconscious just loves to be grateful. This emotion is like switching to "glide" because it makes everything that follows it in the statement very easy to do. "Joyfully, Easily and Healthfully" are sub-variants of the Gratitude function to the subconscious, so it will add those ingredients to the mix, effortlessly. Why did I say they are sub-variants of Gratitude? Because all of these emotions and physical/mental states can only exist when one is in the Flow, in synch with the Universe or what Wayne Dyer calls "the intention of the mind of God". Or Spirit, or Goddess or whatever you call the All-That-Is.

9. Modeling The Mind of God - Remember modeling clay? You pushed your finger in and it made a dent. You literally made an impression on the clay. Our bodies and minds are this way. When situations are evoked strongly, they push in and around on us and make impressions in different places in our minds and bodies. We can learn to "model" these states we are in so as to evoke them later on, when we need to. Right now we’re going to model Gratitude, because it’s one of the most Abundantly Creative states in the universe. Gratitude not only puts you closer to God, but quite literally IS God.

When you truly feel Gratitude, you are in what some religions call "a state of grace". When you are in Gratitude, you allow the presence of the Great Creator to flow through and merge with you. From this state, you can quite literally create whatever you wish, as long as it harms none and is something positive.

If you can’t feel Gratitude about your current situation, bring to mind something or someone for which you are intensely grateful. Your significant other, child, parents, pet, job, living situation, or failing all else, the fact that you are still breathing and have food in your belly - these are all good places to start.

Notice how you feel when you bring this object of great and abundant Gratitude to the fore. Notice what your mind feels like, your body, where you breath is in your body, the shape of your mouth, the amount of tension or relaxation in your shoulders, neck, stomach and legs. You might want to make literal notes, so that when you are trying to evoke Gratitude later on, to power your weightloss or other goal, you can get there more easily. It’s like making a map to a friend’s house. Here is one such typical "map":

When I model my own state of Gratitude, I notice that my mouth is either serenely relaxed, or smiling beautifully. I don’t have to look in a mirror to know it’s a beautiful smile, I can feel it deep down inside me - it’s not superficial and my jaws are relaxed. My shoulders and neck, where I tend to hold tension, are relaxed to a medium or profound degree. My feet feel utterly relaxed but my body is almost hyper-aware of my surroundings. My breath sinks down in my body to my abdomen and I find I am breathing deeply and fully, without effort. My eyes are wide opened if they are open, or very lightly closed if not. My state of attention is acute and present oriented. My mind is calm and unaware of the passage of time if the state is continual and not broken by outside interference. I may hold a thought of the object of my Gratitude, but it is usually single-tracked thought - I’m not thinking many thoughts at once nor am I "multitasking" by having little side thoughts about the groceries, laundry or work I may have yet to do. My mind usually evolves to being devoid of thought when I am in this state for a prolonged period. Gratitude always brings intense joy with it for me and if allowed to persevere more than a few minutes, becomes quite meditative.

That is one model of the State of Gratitude. Because I have studied myself in this state and know exactly how it effects my body, mind and spirit, I can call it up at will. This is especially useful when I am feeling unresourceful, upset or miserable. It is doubly useful when I wish to create a new or different state or situation for myself. Gratitude is the raw material of creation. Model this state in yourself and use that model to evoke Gratitude, Love, Joy and Ease daily for Optimum Health.

10. Course Correction. Let’s go back to our ecologically-correct Setup Phrase:

"I am grateful that my body is joyfully, easily and healthfully creating my ideal weight of 166 pounds this month."

Some people balk at saying "creating my ideal weight of 166 pounds" because they say "that’s NOT my ideal weight - the 130 pounds is my ideal weight! Ah yes. But for just this month, 166 pounds IS your ideal weight. Your Subconscious gets this. And will joyfully, easily and healthfully create it without further input from you. This is a completely ecologically correct phrase. The outcome is well formed

Notice that this setup phrase DOESN’T mention the current weight of 170 pounds - this is what you DON’T want to reinforce. Notice that it DOES mention the ideal weight which you DO want to reinforce. Especially when creating physical processes, include "healthfully" as part of every Setup Statement. This makes sure you don’t get ill and suddenly lose to the weight you specify. Why? Because the subconscious mind is very literal, and sometimes it doesn’t mind what route it takes to accomplish a goal. And how about being happy instead of miserable on your journey? That’s where the joyful and easy make "losing weight" suddenly a fun and effortless process.

"But wait!" you say "Losing weight sucks! I hate diet foods and I hate exercise even worse!"

If phrases like this come into your mind, train yourself to swiftly think "Cancel that." Some folks swear by the Rubber Band Cure - wear a rubber band around your wrist and snap it every time you have to say "Cancel that". This will serve as a physical anchor, or reminder, to clean up your self-talk. And don’t worry about the "how" (diet foods and exercise). Learn to let go of the how and your goal will magically materialize, easily and inevitably, as you keep tapping daily.

11. Ac-cent-uate the Positive. (E-lim-inate the Negative - remember that song?) When you "Cancel that." remember to reframe the phrase into the positive. In this example we focus on the things disliked with a little "sleight-of-mouth" to tunnel ’round the back of the subconscious and influence ourselves triple-whammy style. It’s easy, here’s a reframe you can pose to yourself as a question, over and over again throughout the day, when you feel that "healthy foods - yuck!" thoughtform coming up, with accents on the important words for your mind to remember:

"I wonder how much more EACH DAY, I will ENJOY the foods that deeply nourish my body, KNOWING how SLENDER my BODY is becoming DAY BY DAY?"

So if you read that just for the keywords the subconscious is going to hear first: "Each Day Enjoy Knowing Slender Body Day By Day" This doesn’t make much sense to our educated forebrains, so we put the other words around it that help us parse the important stuff. "Foods that Deeply nourish" is tremendously important, and will be acted on by the subconscious. But "Enjoy Knowing Slender Body Day By Day" is the core message. See how easy it is to craft these kinds of statements? Just take those primary core elements which you will emphasize verbally when saying the affirmation, and wrap them in the syntax of secondary core elements. The accent you place on the primary core elements when verbalizing helps deeply embed the instruction in the subconscious for even more rapid deployment.

Now here’s one for the "don’t-wanna-ain’t-gonna-you-can’t-make-me-exercise!" gremlin that keeps you on the couch:

"It’s so WONDERFUL that I can MOVE EFFORTLESSLY and joyfully as my BODY finds its CORRECT proportions. Gosh, that STRETCHING feels so MMM-MMM GOOD!" (and if you haven’t stretched lately, try it. It *does* feel "mmm-mmm" good!)

These may not sound like phrases you would say right now, but try them out. Customize your own reframing phrases and have a few ready to go on the things you know you say to yourself all the time.

Remember, the subconscious mind is always listening - it believes everything you say and does everything you tell it to do. If you tell it you hate exercise and don’t want to do it, your faithful friend the subconscious will BEND OVER BACKWARDS to make sure you don’t exercise - ever! So even though it may seem stilted at first, learn to modify your own self-talk to create the environment you want to accomplish the goals you need to.

Combine negative self-talk reframing with ecologically-correct Setup Phrasing for a one-two punch that will rocket you lightyears ahead to your goal fulfillment.

Have you tried this? Not tried it but think it’s hooey? Write me! You can let me know what you think here, in the comment box below. I’d love to hear from you…

Warmest Blessings, Maryam Webster

Andy, Lisa and I were talking at Sal Anthony’s  in Manhattan a couple of weeks ago about the problem of freeloading in the Coaching community. You know the syndrome: you put out a free ezine, a free MP3 every now and then, a free bonus pack when people subscribe, maybe a free CD or a teleclass. These are your "Pink Spoons" akin to the free pink spoon of icecream that encourages you to try the $5 cone. Or teleclass or program or CD set or coaching services or whatever else you’re offering for a fee. 

All service businesses offer pink spoon tasters of their services to help potential consumers to get a feel of what they’re offering. (here is one of my bonus-stuffed pieces of pink, and here is another) People need to know who they’re dealing with before they part with their hard-earned dollars, euros or pounds. Like most, I make sure that my Pink Spoons are chock full of value

But tragically, while most are rational consumers, a certain portion of the coaching and energy therapy communities consistently "Plunder the Pink". They love the freebies and consume them in great amounts. They write in with their compliments. They tell us what classes, products and services they absolutely NEED to have us to offer next. We offer them. And they complain (indignantly!) that these further services come at (*gasp!*) a fee. A reasonable fee, but a fee. 

"But everything so far has been for free!" they splutter, "HOW CAN YOU charge for this! I need this! And I just lost my job/have so many bills to pay/for my ill health/a relative’s ill health/my school tuition…" (cue endless personal-bad-luck-story)  "You’ve just GOT TO GIVE ME A BREAK!" 

Excuse me. Give YOU a break?   

Even if your story is legitimate, we are not charities. We have our bills to pay too. And in order to keep offering you quality free monthly offerings like newsletters and telegatherings, we need your support.

So please, folks. If you download someone’s free CD, subscribe to their ezine or download a complimentary ebook, teleclass or audio file, for pete’s sake, consider patronizing their fine paid products or services. If you like what you’ve seen/heard/experienced so far, then BUY a CD, ebook or print book, sign up for a coaching package. You have NO IDEA of the amazing amounts of value you’re missing out on until you do. Most of us give a great deal in our free offerings but save our VERY BEST for those services/products/consumables for which we are justifiably reimbursed.

You wouldn’t ask your doctor/plumber/lawyer for freebie after freebie just because you got a free keychain when you came into their practice. Don’t do it to other service or goods providers either. This is our job. This is how our families eat and how we pay the rent/mortgages/bills.

And if you really don’t have the resources - it is at the very least your obligation NOT to whine and moan about professionals charging reasonable fees for their goods or services. If you can’t personally afford the products or services offered, it doesn’t mean someone whose Pink Spoon you consumed is being "unfair" to you. It means that you have some work to do on your financial profile. The people who are producing these free services and products for you have done that work themselves. It’s not too much to ask to treat them with the respect their paid catalog deserves.

Seth Godin recently had something to say about this as well:

Here’s a guy at Starbucks who nicely consented to being photographed. You’ll notice that he’s eating a burger and fries and yes, a beverage, all from Mickey D’s. (that coffee cup on his table is a vestige from the last customer).

Except he’s not eating at McDonald’s. He’s eating at a very very busy Starbucks, a place where if the line is too long or there are no tables, people leave.

I asked him why he was eating at Starbucks, and he didn’t hesitate, "It’s way nicer here."

Are marketers  training an entire generation that there’s never a limit? That free music and free wifi and free ebooks and free lobby space isn’t just an inducement to pay attention, but is, in fact, a right?

Read the whole thing here. ‘Nuff said. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/05/the_freeloader_.html

Many spiritual teachers now are speaking of the potential changes to happen very soon with larger and larger portions of the population "awakening" to Enlightenment or at least the possibility of Enlightenment. Eckhart Tolle says that if you are listening to his talks or reading his books, this indicates that the process of awakening has at least begun if not progressed significantly, which is a comforting thought. We wouldn’t be attracted to such things of course, if we were still asleep.

But how does one know they are asleep versus awake? I prefer not to think of this state of unawareness as "sleep" but as a serious case of Attention Deficit Disorder. Obviously, people aren’t sleepwalking through their lives or more auto accidents would happen. Okay, okay, so some of us are sleepwalking. <smile>

But what Andrew Cohen and Eckhart Tolle are talking about in terms of sleep is different. Imagine being in school. This Earth School  (to borrow from Thayer White) is constantly teaching us all the time. Sometimes with a teacher in front of you, sometimes with the teacher stepped further away at the other end of the classroom - which could be a supermarket, an empty lot, a soccer field, the bus stop, hospital, your living room or anyplace else. (sometimes, but rarely, is it an actual school classroom)

Being a bright person interested in lots of different topics, you might have a book open on your desk, be listening to your iPod or be surfing the web on your laptop, all at the same time. You’re listening to the teacher…sort of. You’re taking the odd note or two…kind of. But when the pop quiz comes, you don’t make the grade you would like. You feel you should have made a hundred and ended up with sixty-five - how did THAT happen??? 

That O Best Beloved, is what the sages mean by "being asleep". The fully engaged and attentive student gets the best test score, learns deeply and internalizes fully. Multitasking is for sleepwalkers. And so it is in all the stages and plays of life.

Stay tuned for ways to Awaken inside of Life…

I’ve been reading a lot of Andrew Cohen again. He’s one of the contemporary spiritual teachers who bears further examination. Though somewhat erratic in the early days, some of his best writings were some of his earliest. Sharing below, courtesy of the Wayback Machine, a gem from 1991:

Enlightenment Is Not a Personal Matter

When you think about Enlightenment, it is important that you include other people in that idea.

Transcendence will be yours when you begin to accept responsibility for the condition of the whole human race. When you give yourself up in unconditional surrender, automatically you rise up beyond the very limited perspective that most of the human race remains forever lost in. You come upon an infinitely greater perspective in which all questions disappear.

The by-product of Enlightenment is that you cease to suffer the way you suffered in the past. But the most important benefit is for the whole race. Why? Because someone actually will have stopped. When this happens, there is an explosive reaction that is magnetic.

If you feel disturbed by all the conflict and suffering that you see in the world but are unwilling to come to the end of conflict within yourself, then you can be sure that you are not serious.

from Enlightenment Is A Secret © 1991 Moksha Press

It makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it, that if we want to gain personal enlightenment, that we need as Buddha teaches, to gear all of our acts "for the supreme liberation and enlightenment of all beings"?  While we may only succeed in enlightening our ownselves, surely a critical mass of enlightened beings at some point in time may have the potential to effect a mass change of being.

Stay tuned for how and why we "Sleepwalk" through Life…

Personal Coaches and coaching have been around for ages. Coaches existed in the ancient shamans, healers, wise women and story tellers, each of whom had their own very similar codes of conduct as prescriptions for humanity. Much of the wisdom passed down from my grandmother to my mother to me was similar to these codes and formed a Basic Life Manual for myself and my contemporaries:

• Be honest in thought, word and deed.
• Don’t ever assume - to assume makes and Ass of U and Me.
• Don’t take others’ treatment of you personally - you never know what kind of day they might have had. Chances are they’re not reacting to you, but something inside them.
• Treat others as you would have them treat you. The basic Golden Rule.

• Always do your very best, and that’s all we’ll ever ask of you. Do your best, and you will never have regrets.

Most of us have been brought up with codes similar to this, no matter what religion or culture we come from. But suddenly, in the last ten years or so, these basic codes of abundant and spiritual living have made a comeback as "ancient lost wisdom". When a client brought these up to me last year saying "wow, this new stuff is SO cool!" I realized that not everyone may have grown up with this common sense "life manual".

These tenets are basic presuppositions to living an Abundant, Richly Spiritual Life. If this is new for you, pay attention.

Of the many recent redux manifestos is that of Toltec author don Miguel Ruiz, who elegantly brought these simple rules of living together in his book The Four Agreements thus:

The First Agreement

Be impeccable with your word - Always speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

The Second Agreement

Don’t take anything personally - Other’s actions are completely independant of your influence. No one says or does a thing because of your actions. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own "dream". When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.

The Third Agreement

Don’t make assumptions - Find the courage to ask questions, express your Truth and ask for what you need. Communicate with others as clearly and cleanly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

The Fourth Agreement

Always do your best - Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different in different physical circumstances, when healthy or ill, when threatened emotionally or stable and happy. Under any circumstance, just do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.

My grandma and mom weren’t shamans (though Grandmother Mimi certainly had magical healing powers) but they preached the same values. They’re as relevent now to abundant and deeply spiritual living as they were decades - or even centuries ago. Here are some further clarifying questions Grandmother Mimi asked all of us youngsters, updated in today’s language:

1. How do these values/Agreements "show up" in your life today?

2. What is the hardest value/Agreement for you to honor in your life? What makes it so difficult? In what ways is it difficult?

3. What is the easiest of these values/Agreements for you to honor? Why is this easy for you? In what ways?

4. What people, situations or objects most trigger you around which of these values? Why? What can you do to release your reactivity to these people, objects or situations?

Think about it…

New York is interesting. I’m here just prior to the Power of Collaboration conference with Andy and Lisa, hanging out in Nanda’s VERY cool apartment that we’re renting for the week. It’s an amazing flat. It’s decorated in World-Beat chic, with a darling, private little inner-city garden in the back complete with resident rat population (so cute! however, I am the only one who thinks so) and assorted neighborhood kitties.

Oh and Vegan-Ville. Quintessence Cafe, the East Village, right across from our apartment. I just had to go there as Quintessence was the name of my coaching business when I first started out. Quintessence is an all raw-food restaurant about the size of a long slender shoebox. A tiny but chic burrow in this most trendy little niche of NY and not a normal bite of food in the lot.

It was mostly great all but for the pumpkin pie, which tasted like makeup. The spinach-nutcheese rollups were fantastic (you couldn’t even taste the zucchini!), Lisa’s "Pete’s Pot" soup was a superb gazpacho though the California pizza was done on a very strong tasting base of veggie juice pulp Essene bread with a predominantly acidic taste of sundried tomato. Andy’s eyebrows shot up into his hairline over the pasta (spaghetti squash strands) alfredo that he indignantly whispered "isn’t alfredo, dammit!" and gnocchi that was really still-wet falafel dough, outside browned in a slow oven over a period of hours. Overall a nice place, food mostly good and a grand stage for people watching.

Other characters in the City:

Laila, the Beautiful - Speaking of cute kitties, there’s an amazingly cute one at the corner Arab grocery store. Her name is Laila and she is the spitting image of our darling Anoushka when she was that little. I gave Laila ear scruggles and played with her at length - her tiny fishbone sharp teeth nibbled at the tips of my fingers as she purred in pleasure at the skritching. Such a sweetheart and so very, very tiny. What a cool little present in the middle of the day. Gratitude to you O Laila the Beautiful, for the gift of love untrammelled.

The Lady in Pink - 60 years old if she was a day in all-pink miniskirt, pink and black striped hose, fuschia stilettos, Pepto-Bismol bolero jacket and hot pink boa. (yes - a boa) Babbling to no one in particular, she walked up and down 10th street outside our perch in Quintessence Cafe, finally darting across the street and surreptitiously muttering her order to Serge, our waiter. Gratitude to you Pink Lady, for brightening up our day.

Ramtha of the Bathouse  - We’re right next to a gay bath house advertising "Turkish! Russian! Baths!" and while dining, a gentleman emerged wearing a flowing white robe, a satisfied smile and little else, smoking his Black Russian with gusto. He had a lively, ministerial looking back and forth with the construction workers who were busily hurking junked cars into dumpsters in the brownstone next to us (well, it was really rebuilding the second story, but sounds like flinging cars carcasses when you’re in bed in morning waking up to such cacophony), and returned to the depths of Gehenna. Gratitude to you, O Ramtha of the Baths, for wisdom received.

The Tiny-Dog Ladies - Many women passed the restaurant in nice clothing with tiny bark-y dogs in nice clothing. Tiny dog sweaters in slate blue, cream, burgundy and spruce. Tiny dog t-shirts with political slogans and "I’m Mommy’s Good Boy!" in contrasting colors. Tiny doggie voices loudly proclaiming their doggie-ness. Fights break out when two such good boys meet. Gratitude doggie ladies, for reminding us to smile.

And across the street and down a bit is the Chinese Tui-Na massage place which appears to be legit. Lisa and I are totally going in for a tuneup tomorrow, just before Michael’s book party. And the $20 manicure/pedicure place around the corner, yes, yes, yes. Gratitude for small blessings and friends to appreciate them with.

The past few weeks have been a mad whirl of activity, planes, cabs & road trips. May is conference and trainings month. Every therapist or coach worth their sheepskin constantly updates their training and meets with peers and colleagues on a regular basis to share research, successful processes and for networking and general fellowship opportunities. Mine included one Energy and one Coaching conference this month, plus an advanced NLP training.

In the first week of May I attended the Association of Comprehensive Energy Psychology’s 9th Annual International Conference which went wonderfully. I ended my term as Communications Director but was asked to stay on in an advisory position to the Board, which I agreed to. More fun: Past ACEP President Gloria Arenson and I are forming an ACEP Members Special Interest Group for writers on ‘Getting Published’. This will be tremendous fun. More info to come.

I finally got myself a Freeze Framer from the HearthMath people (www.heartmath.org) and we’ve had fun playing with it, getting our hearts in congruence. A more indepth report on this amazing technology to come.

Dr. Luke Cua fixed my nagging back sprain-pain with two needles and lots of breathing in the exhibition hall. If you have a chance to get an appointment with him do so - he’s amazing! You can find out more here:

http://www.newvita.com/

The presentations by Dr. Judith Orloff, Bruce Lipton and Nan Lu were amazing. Nan Lu was particularly entertaining. Full of amusing anecdotes that taught with humor, Nan Lu is someone you’ll want to see in public if at all you can. Women interested in natural weightloss and breast cancer prevention will want to check out his books. Dr. Lu’s informative website is here:

http://tcmworld.org/

Yesterday, I gave a well-received presentation entitled "Quantum Leaps: Integrating Energy Psychology with Performance Coaching for Outrageous Client Success". I was told to expect ten participants, and 43 showed up, packing out the room. Wow! Talk about a turnout! Just goes to show that coaching with an energy focus is beginning to come into its own.

Needless to say I didn’t make enough copies of my notes and needed to run a sheet to mail them out to interested participants. As I am just getting back home from my travels, to those of you who were there and asked, they’re in the mail as I write. It was interesting to note among the many eager to learn, there were one or two psychotherapists who seemed to feel threatened by the mention of coaching.

When given the definition of coaching as working on an extremely high-functioning client’s projects with a goals, vision, mission and purpose - one participant piped up "But that’s what I do as a therapist!" and was distressed to think that "coaches are overstepping their boundaries into therapy". But given that psychotherapy is professionally defined as the diagnosis and treatment of mental dysfunction, this is actually where psychotherapists are overstepping their boundaries into a Coach’s territory. Working with highly functioning clients may be something that therapists do, but it would at that point technically be coaching and deserves by both professions to be delineated as such.

Conversely when discussing a particular example clinet, a gentleman took umbrage at my suggestion that coaches work with a client’s stated goal. He said "What, you mean even those that are selfish or aren’t altrustic goals?"  As I was watching the clock, this wasn’t the time to get into that wonderful Coaching Presupposition "Thou Shalt Be Selfish", but let me go there now…

If you don’t know what you want for yourself, you will never have anything worth having. If you don’t know how you want your life to go, your life will occur at random, and will be attracted towards the strongest energy in it. As that focus in the human species is usually negative, concentered around "what I don’t want"/"what I won’t put up with" - that will tend to be what you attract. (weird, but unfortunately true) Being Healthily Selfish is one of personal coaching’s treasured tenets. When I take superb care of myself, I can better care for others.

The corollary to this kind of Selfish is the instruction you hear on an airplane - you are asked to put your own oxygen mask on before you assist others. If you wait, you may not be around to assist others. This isn’t the selfish of refusing to share your toys, it’s the selfish of refusing to share yourself when you are debilited, decimated and need to recharge. That, is a "healthy" kind of selfish. And to frame that in the positive: Make sure your own needs are taken care of first, before your day serving others begins. Make sure to always, in every situation, feed, water and put your own oxygen mask on first, before giving to or engaging with others. That’s the kind of Selfish that everyone should be.

And what about only altruistic goals? Well, it’s not a Coach’s position to judge a client’s goals - whether they are right or wrong or whether they are good or bad for the client. We can comment, we gan give the benefit of our experience and wisdom to clients, but as a rule, Coaches unconditionally champion the client’s goals, unless they are obviously contravening the law, or our personal ethics. If you can’t or won’t do that, you’re not in a position to be a good Coach.

Who are we to judge what is right for another? That kind of superiority is what many therapy clients are used to seeing, hearing and feeling from their therapists. (I speak as a former therapist in this) And in its own time and place, it can be a useful tool of therapy in the initially needy and codependant stages. But it is not and never will be a tool or mindset of Coaching.

Key Distinction: Coaching is not about "fixing" people or seeing them as broken, imperfect or dysfunctional. Coaching is about seeing, eliciting and championing the client’s own inherent greatness, and using that resource state to fuel their goals, passion, vision and mission in life.

Interesting thoughts and interesting conference…

I look forward this week to flying to Manhattan for the Power of Collaboration Conference. Reports, as and the time to post manifests!