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Life Coaches Blog

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Comments Are Off For A WeekOctober 3

I’m going to be away for a week or thereabouts, and in the meantime comments will be off. You can still leave one, but it’ll be waiting in my approval list before it gets published.

Otherwise you’ll be seeing Viagra spam all here! Have a good week!

Tune In – Give the Gift of ListeningSeptember 29

Think of a time you were conversing with someone. As you talked with them you noticed the lights were on, but nobody was home. You may say they were in la la land or daydreaming. When was the last time you got the blank stare from someone? We have all probably experienced chatting with a friend or having a discussion with our spouse only to realize they are off in another world.

We may ask; “Did you hear me?” to which they quickly respond with; “Huh? Yeah…” Parents sometimes experience this when they are correcting their teenager. The teenager rolls the eyes or looks everywhere else except for in the eyes of their parent. All too often this happens. Not only has it happened to us, but we have also done it to others.

Who Are You Really Listening To?

We have all been there where someone is pouring their heart out to us and we are genuinely listening, but then something pops into our mind (out of nowhere it seems!) and we begin to dwell on it. We start carrying on a conversation in our head concerning a situation or circumstance going on in our life, forgetting about the conversation we were having with the person across from us. This can all happen in a matter of minutes. This leaves the other person feeling like they are not important and are a burden to us.

I believe we all desire to be genuine listeners and to resist the temptation of carrying on a conversation in our head while talking with someone. The simple fact is there will a

Book Review: Personal Development for Smart PeopleSeptember 28

When the King of Personal Development Blogging Steve Pavlina announced he was writing a book that promised to reveal the core underlying principles behind all personal growth, you can bet I got pretty excited. I’ve always been curious about the whys behind what we human beings do, and I was curious about what Steve had to say about the differences between people who grow and people who don’t.

I enrolled in his offer for a review copy of Personal Development for Smart People, and happily got it (mine was an e-book version – his publishing house got so many requests from overseas they couldn’t ship everyone a hard copy). I’ve sat with it the last two weekends to read, and this is what I got.

The 3 Essential Keys to Personal Growth

Steve boils the whole of personal development down to three essential principles: truth, love and power. Whether you experience personal growth from practicing Zen, NLP or sports, the core reasons why you do come from follwing these three principles.

He further explains that the next three principles that are essential to successful personal growth stem from a combination of the first three. Oneness stems fr

Book Review: Roasting in Hell’s KitchenSeptember 27

Most of us know chef Gordon Ramsay from his TV appearances; giving hell to contestants on Hell’s Kitchen or roasting restaurateurs on Kitchen Nightmares. Watching either show is a stark example of schadenfreude – German for ‘enjoyment taken from the misfortune of someone else’ – it’s painful sometimes but you can’t tear yourself away.

Ever since 37signals introduced me to Gordon and his show, I’ve enjoyed watching Kitchen Nightmares, not just because it’s entertaining, but because you can learn so much from it. Gordon’s not just a one-trick pony who’s getting famous on being egotistical, loud and overbearing, he’s also a great chef and entrepreneur.

Wanting to learn more about why Gordon does what he does, I bought his autobiography Roasting in Hell’s Kitchen: Temper Tantrums, F Words, and the Pursuit of Perfection. After reading it, my respect for Ramsay increased ten-fold – he’s gone through a lot to get where he is today but most people won’t see that in his TV shows.

Living the Dream Part IIISeptember 25

I had always prided myself on my ability to make good choices and I thought this was one of them. A lifelong quest for the secrets of happiness; the years of studying and reading about attaining goals, human behavior, spirituality and psychology, had helped prepare me for this moment. And yet, I still did not have an answer.

I decided to sit at one of the beachside cafés and ponder the question. It occurred to me that a book I had recently purchased called Practicing the Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle, was in my bag. I took it out and flipped through the pages, hoping it would give me a clue. I came upon this passage:

“Surrender is the simple but profound wisdom of yielding to rather than opposing the flow of life. The only place where you can experience the flow of life is the Now, so to surrender is to accept the present moment unconditionally and without reservation. It is to relinquish inner resistance to what is.”

A surge of profound insight rushed through me.

In the five minutes it took to read and absorb that passage, I had an instant awakening. It was miraculously clear to me:

“Accept the flow of life.” These people and situations were exactly the way they were supposed to be; my resistance to them was only causing pain and suffering for myself and those close to me. I needed to surrender to what was, and to what is, moment by moment.

For years I had vacillated between living in the past an