Coaching Blog

Mattison Grey sent me the 'Shit Life Coaches Say' video the same day that I got an invitation to create a TEDed Lesson. So voila! I made a coach training lesson out of it.

That was also about the time I set up a Pinterest account and started linking it to some old 'How Not to Coach' videos from SCM. Some of them are quite funny and 'Shit Life Coaches Say' fits right in.

The embed below is from Pinterest. View the TEDed lesson here.

Like all How Not to Coach videos, this one has some truth to it. Newer coaches quickly adopt the language of the profession and love to talk the talk with each other, because they all 'get it'. Nothing wrong with that. Except...

If you can't put something into plain language, you probably don't really understand it, yet. And that makes it hard to communicate it to non-coaches ~ including those you'd like to have for clients. Move away from using jargon as soon as you can.

Oh, and if being laughed at makes you uncomfortable, get used to it. Life coaching is a recognized profession and like all others, it's a target for jokes. Remember the one about the doctor, lawyer and priest?

Guest post by Melissa Heisler, 3rd Place Winner of Best Coaching Blogs 2010.

There are only two ways to live your life.  One is as though nothing is a miracle.  The other is as though everything is. – Albert Einstein

I always loved the quote above.  When I experienced people who wanted to prove this or that “truth” about evolution, science, health, the stock market, or any topic, I held on to this quote.  To me it released the pain of having to determine the singular right answer.  However, the other day it was infused with an even more important meaning.

Lately I had been obsessed with the answer to life, the universe, and everything.  My little pea-brain wanted to uncover why we are here.  What is our purpose on this earth?  Previously a friend recommended Anthony De Mello’s book Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality.  I had read 90% of this very interesting and deep read conveyed in a soft voice in March and for some reason picked it up again the other day.  In the last few pages, I came across this wisdom.

“Every time you make sense out of reality, you bump into something that destroys the sense you made.  Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning.  Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind.”

This was the final puzzle piece for me.  I had spent my life trying to undercover the meaning of life.  Was it this career or the other?  Was it family or romantic relationships?  Was it hedonistic joy or solemn prayer?  Was it self-care or servitude?  Was it margaritas and the Simpsons cartoon?  As I grew and became more wise, each option was seen through.  It was seen as a thing of itself, not true meaning.  I tried to play the game that I just had to find a more noble and less self-serving thing, action, career to find meaning.  But those felt hollow too.  

Thinking that life, all of life, is a mystery opens up not only a new world of understanding but a new way of being.  There is now an immense joy I had never experienced before.  Being stuck in traffic, wanting a new pair of shoes, or checking off my to-do list no longer have significance and precedence in my life.  Now I try to focus every moment on soaking up the mystery.  How does my brain communicate to my fingers to type these words?  How does a cold front wash across the plains to create raindrops to feed my plants?  How is it that I can feel the joy or sadness of others deep in my heart even before they speak a word?

Take a day to look at the world as one of mystery.  See how it changes your life.  Namaste.

Melissa Heisler, personal and business coach for It’s My life, Inc., loves to help small business owners, direct sales professionals, and home based businesses thrive during difficult times.

Visit Melissa's entry in the Best Coaching Blogs 2012 Contest Here.

The annual Best Coaching Blogs Contest is starting up again this month and the entry period is now open.

Every year, since 2009, School of Coaching Mastery has sponsored this online contest between many of the top blogs in business and life coaching. Thousands of readers check out the blogs entered and the coaching bloggers, themselves, report that it's fun, attracts new readers to their blogs, as well as new coaching clients.

Best Coaching Blogs Contests in past years, have always thrived on social sharing and cooperation, as much as on competition.

This year, we've revamped the contest to make it even more social than ever and we're putting it in the format of a blog, which kind of makes sense! We've also gotten rid of the dreaded 'Down Vote' option, which caused a fair amount of consternation in years past and we're experimenting with allowing people to vote as often as they wish.

This year, when you enter your coaching blog, your entry will show up as a blog post on the contest page. Each entry/blog post will have social sharing buttons at the top of it, like the ones you see above this post. The social sharing buttons will function as votes, which will display the total number of shares/votes for that entry. The 20 bloggers with the most votes will themselves vote via closed ballot for the Top Ten Best Coaching Blogs of 2012.

Winners will receive permanent listings on this site, with links to their blogs, plus winner badges and bragging rights. In past years, major coaching organizations have entered, as well as coaching students with brand-new blogs. The winners every year are a mix of established blogs and newbies, meaning anybody can win this prestigious blogging contest.

Here's how the new Best Coaching Blogs contest works:

1. Enter your blog in the contest - it's free (be sure to read the rules)
2. You'll get a badge for your blog that announces you as a contestant
3. Invite your mailing list to vote for you and add their reasons why they love your blog in the Comments Section of your blog entry
4. Blog about it on your blog
5. Share your entry with your social networks on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ and invite folks to vote for you
6. Use social sharing best practices: if you share with sensitivity, your contacts will share with their contacts and you votes could go viral, but if you over-share with your network, you may annoy and/or lose your friends and followers. (If you set up dummy accounts and over-share to non-existent contacts, you may be banned from the contest)
7. Get to know your fellow bloggers and support the blogs you think should win - this is a friendly contest
8. If you make it to the semi-finals, vote for the Best Coaching Blogs of 2012, based on the quality of their content and good sportsmanship.

Do you have a Coaching Blog that you'd like to enter in Best Coaching Blogs 2012?

Guest post by Jen Waller, Top Ten Winner of Best Coaching Blogs 2011.

I didn’t intend to become a coach, run my own coaching business or be my own boss when I first started out learning about coaching. I just found it increasingly fascinating and enjoyed playing and discovering.

It does mean that it’s difficult to pinpoint the precise moment in time when I first started coaching - it just naturally evolved. I do know that it happened over a decade ago.

There’s mistakes I’ve made, things I could have done differently and action I could have taken faster. However, I’m really comfortable with the choices I’ve made and the path I’ve taken as it’s got me to where and who I am now.

Here’s just 3 of those lessons from when I first started coaching:

Having all the coaching knowledge in the world is not going to make a difference to clients unless you are using them by actually coaching people! Some of the best learning experiences I’ve had have come from working with clients.

That does not mean I’m suggesting don’t ever seek and take formal training courses. I personally believe that it’s a duty I have to my current/future clients to continually develop, explore and refine my work.

I am suggesting that you don’t put off putting it into practice!

2. You don’t have to listen and get involved with any distracting thoughts about self doubt or insults

I remember when I first started coaching that I had all these distracting thoughts running through my head.

It was not at all unusual to realise I was paying attention to questions in a coaching session such as

• “Am I good enough?”
• “ I can’t ask that question, what will they think?” or
• “Who am I to ask that question?”

On other occasions it could be a running negative commentary on how terrible a question was, how something was clumsily worded or a general observation that my coaching was terrible and awful! - All a bit distracting to really focus and listen to my client in that moment.

It was the realisation that coaching was not about me, it was about the client in front of me (or at the other end of the phone) that made the difference for me.

It was the catalyst so that when I recognised those thoughts I could let them go, not get caught up in them and return my focus to my client in that moment – that thinking could be indulged in “my time”, as I thought of it, outside of that session.

Funny thing was that the more I didn’t get caught up in those thoughts during a session, the less they seemed relevant when it came to “my time” outside the session!

3. Not knowing a “script” of questions in advance is OK, it doesn’t mean that you are not prepared.

As you watch others coaching, attend trainings and generally read around the subject you will no doubt come across some fantastic questions. Ones that leap out at you so that you want to store them away to pull out in one of your own coaching sessions.

At some stage in my early development I mixed up preparing for a coaching session with having to have a list of pre-planned questions complete with the order they would be asked in the session ahead.

For a while I thought that the fact that I found that really difficult to create (and when I did, never stuck to the list in reality) meant that I was a terrible coach. I let it get in the way of how confident I felt with my coaching.

What I had missed was the fact that this is a coaching conversation. I don’t generally pre-plan conversations in other contexts, I allow those to flow naturally in response to what the other person says. So why do it with a coaching conversation?

Those questions stored away for future use still come in useful but they are used when it’s the “best fit” with where my client is at that moment.

This new way of thinking also allows for the possibility that some of the most powerful questions utilise that individuals own language. If you like, questions that you create in the moment prompted by the answer just given – even if it is one similar to the ones you’ve stored away for future reference.

I’ve selected just three out of many possible things I’ve learnt. These are just my experience, what about yours?

If you are new to coaching, what can you take from this post that will make a difference to your next step?

If you have more coaching experience, what would you share for your personal journey?

Jen Waller is on a mission to support, nurture and encourage coaching skills and talents from non-coach to coach and beyond.

Her coaching blog, Coaching Confidence, is a blog for coaches of all niches. Containing daily quotes, alongside posts covering topics such as personal development, coaching skills and resources. Each Friday the blog hosts a guest post covering a broad range of different coaching experiences, styles and approaches.

Want to enter Best Coaching Blogs 2012?

If you're thinking about becoming a coach, then you're probably wondering whether you should get online coach training or in-person business and life coach training.

It's an incredibly important issue for you, because it impacts your career, your passion and your ability to make a great living. So be sure to get this right.

I may be biased, but I've experienced coach training in virtually every possible format, so I have a useful perspective to share with you and I've concluded that online coach training is best for the following reasons...

REASON #1: MONEY. Most professional coaches-to-be are concerned about the money they spend on coach training and rightly so. However, ultimately you also need to be concerned with your Return On Investment (ROI), which refers to how much more money you'll make as a coach and how soon. Because depending on your training, your life coach salary could range from zero to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. That's huge.

In person coach training almost always involves travel and lodging costs in addition to the training itself. And because hotels and classrooms are expensive for coaching schools, in-person coach training almost always carries higher tuition costs, as well, sometimes as much as $20,000 or more.

Plus, in-person business and life coach training tends to be offered in short workshops and seminars, that last as little as a weekend or even one day. The event itself may be great, but if you've ever gone to a seminar, workshop or conference, learned fabulous new stuff and were certain that it would change your life - only to go home and find yourself living your same old life one week later, then you understand the 'extinction principle' which says that even great training wears off massively if not followed by systems and environments that support change. Which means your $20,000 coach training may leave you inspired, but with no viable coaching business. That's bad ROI.

By contrast, online coach training usually costs less, involves no travel, time off from work, lodging costs, traffic jams or other delays. Just show up for class from where ever you are. And since online coach training is usually ongoing, you'll have supportive systems and structures to help you succeed, built right into the process. You're likely to spend less on training, start making money as a coach sooner and make more money overall. That's great ROI.

REASON #2: TIME. I just touched on time, above, but here are some more time-related issues to think about: While it's important to optimize your training time, your brain will absorb what you learn better and you'll learn to apply what you learn more quickly if you spend a couple of hours per week in class and then apply your lessons to your own coaching business during the week.

It would be great if you could just go to a weekend seminar and walk out ready to be a successful coach, but as a smart savvy person, you know transforming your life means changing a myriad of old habits to new ones. That takes time.

A few dedicated learning hours per week, stretched out over a couple of months - or even a couple of years - will allow you to take what you've learned and begin applying it in your life and business, especially when your coaching school includes reinforcing structures, such as study groups, mentor coaching, online forums, and most of all, live online classes with homework. (By the way, that's exactly how effective business and life coaching works: you have a live conversation with a client, who experiences life-changing insights with you. Then they go out and apply those insights to their life or business and report the results to you. Rinse and repeat.)

As Aristotle said, “We are what we habitually do. Excellence then is a habit, not an act.”

REASON #3: LEARNING. I mentioned the learning issue above, but here's a deeper look at that. Most folks assume the they will learn more in in-person training, but that's usually because they haven't experienced high-quality distance learning. I'm not talking about turning in written papers online and I'm not talking about audio CDs and MP3s. While those can be helpful adjunct tools for training, nothing beats live, conversational classes for learning coaching. Let's face it: coaching is live in-the-moment conversations, followed by strategic action. That's what effective coach training is, as well.

I'm also not talking about teleclasses, which are still a popular training format in some of the older coaching schools. And I'm not talking about standard webinars, which usually involved little or no conversation in a class. Today's technology allows us to do everything in what I call a 'tele-webinar' that we can do in person, except shake hands (or get stuck in traffic).

Tele-webinar training is perfect for learning business and life coaching, because it allows you to join from anywhere, using your iPad, computer, and/or telephone; and have a highly interactive conversational class that allows you to learn in whatever learning style works best for you: audio learning, visual (in the form of slides, live demos, co-browsing, videos, etc.), questions and answers, live practice and feedback, downloading materials before, during or after class, move your body, take notes, take an instant test, go out and apply it along with class colleagues, whatever learning strategy works best for you. Little by little, you learn new habits of excellence and get inspired by your own, and your classmates' successes. Together, you succeed.

If you'd like to get started learning to be a successful coach and get life coach certification quickly, using the tele-webinar format, try Coaching Groundwork Advanced.

Guest post by David Papini, CCC.

Coaching is about conversations and human beings.

Conversations happen in different contexts and human beings can be criminals. Coaching is powerful, but has limits. Can you coach psychotics? Can you coach evil clients? Can you coach a Nazi?

There is a scene from Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List where Oskar Schindler (actor Liam Neeson) is talking with Amon Goeth (actor Ralph Fiennes) and tries to convince him to change his evil criminal “behavior” toward the prisoners.

Here is the conversation from a coaching technique point of view where Amon is the client and Schindler the coach:

If you put aside the maybe weird and scary feeling of coaching someone seriously mentally ill, with criminal traits and in a position of real power (as Amon Goeth was, in reality and in the movie) you may recognize that it is possible to meet clients with at least one of these trait (hopefully with lower intensity). Among the three traits (mental illness, propensity to criminal acts, power in an organization) I think that mental illness is the one that “technically” excludes the possibility of coaching because a coach cannot address the real (neither the great) self of the client, because that self is seriously damaged: only therapy maybe can.

Propensity to criminal acts poses an ethical problem, because it is possible, technically, to coach a client while embracing his criminal or violent self, but this puts the coach in the position of supporting a criminal (which is a moral and legal issue, not a technical one). For the sake of the discussion, if you are a criminal and a coach, you can coach a criminal, if you do not share the same criminal background, you may want to coach a client that wants to change his criminal behaviors in the future, but even in this case you cannot have a hidden agenda (like “helping the client to become a good citizen”) only an agenda that is shared with him.

If agendas (yours or client’s) are illegal or unethical or hidden, you cannot coach.

Coaching a powerful person, of course, can be done and I think that when my client’s real power (or status) is higher than mine, what makes the coaching relationship a good one is establishing that “us” mindset.  Which is the only part that I would save of the otherwise poor Schindler’s coaching performance.

Visit David Papini's Coach 100 Page Here.

David was born in Florence in 1966 just a few months before the deluge, and that's a kind of destiny. As an executive is in charge for general management in a IT Firm, as a certified NLP counselor helps clients to explore their life experience, as a Coach helps clients getting what they really want, as a conflict mediator witnesses how tough and creative a relationship can be, as a trainer helps trainees in stretching their brain, growing and learning, as a public speaker enjoys co-creating experience on the fly, as a dad loves his two children. As a man he is grateful and worried that he’s got this wonderful life. And he’s fond of categorizing his professional roles :-). More about him at http://papini.typepad.com/lifehike/
Flicker Creative Commons photo by HistoryIn An Hour

Today, in the International Association of Coaching's (IAC) Voice newletter/blog, an article by Business Coach, Mattison Grey, MCC, appeared with the title, When the Best Coaching Tool Isn't a Question.

In her article, Mattison makes a powerful case for acknowledgment as a masterful coaching tool. She should know. Mattison wrote the book on acknowledgment called, The Motivation Myth. And she points out that most coaches don't know what it is or confuse it with something else.

Mattison has studied the art of acknowledgment more than anyone I know, probably more than any coach alive, so I always defer to her on this subject. She started educating me on acknowledgment six or seven years ago and I've watched her use it in action many times. It truly is amazing.

Unfortunately, if you haven't watched a master acknowledger practice her art, or if you didn't know what you were witnessing, you probably missed the implications. So let me point out a few.

Here's Mattison's definition of acknowledgment:

Acknowledgment is saying what a person did, or results they achieved, delivered with a tone of appreciation, curiosity or surprise, and without judgment.

Easy, right? Try it. For most coaches, it's anything but easy. That's because we're still getting in the client's way (In other words, we're NOT making it all about them, so we're failing the first step in master coaching).

If you acknowledge well, here are some of the things that may happen:

• Your client lights up
• They feel seen/heard
• They don't feel suspicious (as in, 'What's she buttering me up for?')
• They acknowledge themselves ('I did!')
• They open up to us
• They see themselves in a new light
• They tell us things we didn't even know to ask about
• They think more resourcefully
• They step into their Personal Greatness
• They are willing to do far more
• They love themselves (and us)

When I teach acknowledgment to Master Coach Training students, I offer a few pointers, such as, use second-person pronouns (you, your, yours) instead of first-person pronouns (I, me, mine); acknowledge what the client did, the results they got and who they are becoming.

When used well, acknowledgment can express or enhance virtually any other coaching skill, including all of the IAC Coaching Masteries(tm). The right acknowledgment, well-placed and followed by a bit of silence, can even be a powerful clarifier.

Which is one reason why master coaches don't always ask questions.

Get your copy of Mattison's book, The Motivation Myth (at left) and become a master of acknowledgment.*

*I'm an affiliate of Mattison's and I would recommend this book, anyway.

Guest post by David Papini, CCC.

In a famous speech at Stanford University, on June 12th, 2005, Steve Jobs said: "Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it, no big deal, just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots".

At the time Steve Jobs was approaching his fifties, and in that speech he was looking back to his life from the viewpoint of a successful entrepreneur, also gone through many setbacks, including a though start as an adopted child and serious health issues.

What he does in front of the Stanford's graduates is looking back and making sense of his story, connecting the dots of his life. Of course he does it a posteriori, looking at the causes from an effect (who and where he is in 2005) viewpoint. And, second, he tells a story, which, as we know, it's always a partial view of the facts (or of reality, if you prefer).

A few weeks ago, while I was preparing a speech about my job as a life & executive coach, I was struggling with finding a short definition able to capture the essence of coaching (I mean, not just an advertising sentence, the "essence" ), and it occurred to me that what a coach helps a client with is to connect her/his life/career dots before her/his achievements. So, to me, a coach helps a client to connect the dots looking forward, instead of backward.

If you look back at your dots and connect them, what do you see?

Now, look, listen, feel ahead your doubts, question marks, uncertainties.

List them.

Look at them together.

Connect them.

What do you see?

Coaching is about this: helping you to create and or change that picture of you in the future.

Visit David Papini's Coach 100 Page Here.

David was born in Florence in 1966 just a few months before the deluge, and that's a kind of destiny. As an executive is in charge for general management in a IT Firm, as a certified NLP counselor helps clients to explore their life experience, as a Coach helps clients getting what they really want, as a conflict mediator witnesses how tough and creative a relationship can be, as a trainer helps trainees in stretching their brain, growing and learning, as a public speaker enjoys co-creating experience on the fly, as a dad loves his two children. As a man he is grateful and worried that he’s got this wonderful life. And he’s fond of categorizing his professional roles :-). More about him at http://papini.typepad.com/lifehike/

If you're a business of life coach, or any type of solo professional, then attracting coaching clients via social networking sites can be incredibly valuable.

If you're new to social networking and social media marketing, it can be pretty overwhelming. The great news is that you only need some essentials to get started. From there, it's pretty easy 'to learn as you go'.

The first step of course, is to join and build a following on social networking sites. From there, if you know how to do it, you can easily attracting paid coaching clients. I share two brief stories about how two coaches filled their coaching practices quickly with clients by leveraging their social networking relationships with Coach 100 in the new eBook, The Essential Guide to Social Media Marketing for Solo Professionals. To Get the free eBook, click the big button below. To learn more about how to attract coaching clients via social networking and many other approaches, join Coach 100. More info below. But first, here's one section from the new eBook.

How to Build Your Following on Social Sites

1. Start by following others. Makes sense, doesn’t it? People like to connect and they’ll be more likely to connect with you, if you make the first move. Don’t be shy. This is a lot easier than asking somebody to dance at a high-school mixer. But here’s where it gets similar to school: the more popular you are, the more people will want to connect to you. Get the ball rolling and eventually momentum will start to help you out.
2. Consistently Add Fresh Content to Your Social Profiles. Social networking doesn’t have to take more than a few minutes per day, but do be consistent. Try setting aside ten minutes per day to share something relevant. An easy way to do this is to share great blog posts from blog sites that are related to your specialty. Most blogs today have social sharing buttons built right into the interface (see ours above). You can amplify your shares across numerous social sites by taking advantage of their sharing options. LinkedIn has this built into posts. Just click a box to share something from LinkedIn to Twitter, for example.
3. Self-Promote Minimally. Even on sites where self-promotion is well tolerated, such as Twitter, the rule of thumb is to post something promotional once out of every seven tweets. Exceptions are made for commercial accounts, such as Starbucks or Amazon, that people follow specifically to receive discount offers. If you’re running a high-end solo business, such as coaching, you want to primarily engage in conversations and add useful content, with an occasional offer to buy your book, attend your seminar, or try a sample session. Be even more judicious on Facebook, which is primarily social, unless you have a (free) Facebook Page for your business.
4. Be Somebody People Want to Follow. That’s one reason why a head shot of you is so important to your social profile. People generally follow people, not companies. Let your personality come across. Are you philosophical? Share deep thoughts and/or quote other famous people (and share the thoughts of people you follow – which is a great way to get them to follow you back). Love humor? Make an occasional wisecrack or share the jokes of famous comedians you follow. Care about social issues? Update your accounts with links to important online petitions. All of this pays off when your clients like what you like. The better you know your market, the more you can hone your voice.
5. Be conversational. Reply to people who message you. Retweet or share their comments. Join in the conversation. This can be as simple as ‘liking’ what somebody says on Facebook or as involved as participating in a lively conversation in a group on LinkedIn.
6. Focus on the social networks that matter most to your clients. You can’t be everywhere, even on the internet. If you have a business-to-consumer service (as opposed to business-to-business), then LinkedIn may not be ideal for you. If your clientele are older, then maybe the latest hot new social site (currently, that’s Pinterest) isn’t important yet for your business.
7. Invite your website visitors to join you online. Add ‘Follow Me’ buttons (you can get them free from Twitter, for instance, or Google to find 3rd-party buttons) to every page on your site (See our 'Follow Us' buttons to the right). This encourages your visitors to talk about you in a potentially viral venue. Likewise, be sure to add social sharing buttons to all of your blog posts (if you have one – recommended). All the major forms of blogging software (like Wordpress) have them available. Finally, you can add social conversations to your website by adding social streams from Facebook, Twitter, etc. (scroll down to the right to see one of ours) The more ways people can find you and talk about you online, the more people will find you and talk about you online. Trigger the viral nature of social networking and your customers will market for you!

To get indepth instructions on how to build your coaching business with social media, along with many other approaches, join Coach 100. There are three levels to choose from, depending on your experience and how much you want to spend. Each one provides a proven system for attracting paying coaching clients and filling your business.

To get the free eBook, The Essential Guide to Social Media Marketing for Solo Professionals, click below.

I became a Life Coach because of Oprah.

Yup, that's how much an influence she's been on my life. I first got fired up to become a coach, while watching Oprah do a series with Life Coach, Cheryl Richardson, twelve years ago. Now I'm training other folks who are equally fired up, to become coaches, themselves. Thank you, Oprah!

Last Monday, I saw Oprah live at the premiere of her Lifeclass Tour. You might wonder why I waited 'til now to go see Oprah live. All I can say is, I won the ticket lottery for the world premiere of her Lifeclass Tour here in St. Louis and boy was I excited! Here's what I took away from this amazing adventure...

LESSON 1: Know When to Break the Rules. Moments before leaving my house in Washington County, I called my friend, Career Coach, Joanne Waldman, PCC, for some last-minute directions to her house, more than an hour away. Joanne, who was accompanying me to Lifeclass, mentioned that the rules said we were supposed to bring small handbags, not gigant-o bags, like the one I was planning to bring (Oprah likes her audience to look great on camera, so wear bright colors and keep your little bag under your seat).

No problem! I have a huge collection of cute little bags and I quickly found one just big enough for my wallet and cell phone. I got to Joanne's house right on time, despite some crazy road construction and it was an absolutely gorgeous day. We were psyched to be seeing Oprah in just two more hours and were about to get some lunch on the way when...

Holy Crap! I left our Lifeclass tickets in my big bag at home! (That's life with ADD.) If only...oh God! But it was too late. No tickets, no admission. I called the theater. No dice...

LESSON 2: Set Your Intentions and Act Like Your Hair's On Fire. I called my sister, Becky, and asked her to bring my big bag with the tix and meet us halfway. It was crazy. There was no way we'd get there before the theater closed its doors for the taping, but we went for it.

God bless Becky, she drives like a 5-Alarm Fire Chief even when there's no rush. She met us with the tix. I handed them to Joanne for good keeping and took off to make the hour-and-a-half drive with only an hour and ten minutes left 'til doors closed. Like good coaches, Joanne and I visualized walking through those theater doors with big smiles on our faces and handing our tickets to the ushers. And we made it. With fifteen minutes to spare! (Okay, there was some speeding involved.)

My friend, Career Coach, Joanne Waldman, PCC, in-line with a big smile on her face, just before walking through the front doors of the Peabody Opera House for Oprah's Lifeclass, feeling really relieved to be there on time (and in one piece). =====>

And you guessed it! Half the audience was carrying gigant-o handbags (see above pic) and nobody cared. So respect your limitations (mine is distractability) and adjust the rules to fit you. And if you screw up (which you will), set strong intentions and act on them like your hair's on fire.

<===== Here's me in the lobby, just before the ushers threw us out, insisting we get to our seats. Yeah, we broke their rule to 'keep moving', so we could nab a couple of pics. After all, we were feeling pretty special for getting there faster than humanly possible.

LESSON 3: Take a Chance on the Unknown. I had the option to enter the lottery for 4 different Lifeclass tapings, each with a different guest. Two were Deepak Chopra and Tony Robbins, heroes of mine. One for Iyanla Vanzant, who's great. And one for a guy I never heard of, Bishop T. D. Jakes. I really just wanted to see Oprah, so I took a chance on the new guy and he was absolutely awesome. I won't even try to tell you what he said; you have to SEE him. The show airs Monday, April 9th, 8ET/7CT. Bishop Jakes is all about Finding Your Purpose.

LESSON 4: You're Here for a Reason. That was the key message of the show. You're here at this show for a reason (Joanne and I knew that. We were MEANT to be there, so we had to get there on time). Your life has a purpose and Oprah and Jakes taught us how to find it. Adversity doesn't stop you from achieving your purpose. In fact, Jakes' metaphor for purpose and adversity is an archer: If you're the arrow, and your life is the bow, then the farther the archer (adversity) pulls the arrow (you) back, the farther and stronger you'll go to reach your purpose (Joanne and I had just proven that on the way to the show).

LESSON 5: Your life is a class. I was already familiar with most of the lessons they taught that day. After all, I've been a life-long personal development junkie. Oprah and Jakes just have an incredibly intense and wonderful way of teaching it all. They connect to the audience more profoundly and reach more people, as a result. They are more animated (that's why you have to SEE them). They're more entertaining. After all, they are masters of television. They are stars. But aren't you are star, also? Oprah thinks so.

LESSON 6: It's what happens off-the-record that really inspires. At the end of the show, as we were about to leave our seats, Oprah came back out, not for the television cameras, but just for us. She talked about how her purpose was to use television to help people have better lives. That she was always asking God to use her. And she had focused on how to use the Oprah show to serve her purpose, not have the show use her. And that's her big vision for OWN TV. That she has made mistakes with the network and was digging out of a hole (the papers say she just laid off 20% of her staff). She asked for our help to spread the word, so our culture has at least one television channel that uplifts, instead of just pandering to our lowest common interests.

It was her candidness and vulnerability that spoke most clearly. Here is the biggest star in the world (according to one poll), a profoundly spiritual being who just happens to be a billionaire in kickass diamond earrings. It seems like she has the Midas Touch, but even she can make mistakes...

Hmmm, could it be that adversity will help her arrow soar even farther and stronger?

Yep, that little speck center stage is Oprah, from my iPhone in row Z of the orchestra. That's okay, I saw her with my own eyes and heard her message with my own ears. =====>

LESSON 7: Be a Servant Star. Oprah's Lifeclass made me realize that I'd lost track of my purpose, so I can't use School of Coaching Mastery to reach it. I started the school to help carry out Thomas Leonard's purpose to improve coaching worldwide with IAC coach certification. He infected me with his vision ten years ago, but then he passed away, the IAC changed, its certification has changed, the ICF has also changed. Now I'm mired in certification requirements...

School of Coaching Mastery has never really been about life coach certification. It's about the mastery coaches achieve on the way to coach certification. But what's the purpose of coaching mastery?

Coaching mastery is about helping people (coaching clients) learn the life lessons they need faster and more deeply, so they can create better lives and reach the highest, fullest expression of their beings. Period.

I've talked for years about the importance for coaches, of becoming Servant Entrepreneurs and I just had the honor of seeing the Ultimate Servant Entrepreneur.

Oprah is a Servant Star. Not because she's about being a star, it's because she's about revealing the star in you and asking you to use it to serve.

How inspiring is that?

In what ways might you already be a Servant Star? How do other Servant Stars light you up? How do you light people up? What do you need in order to use your life to serve your purpose? Do you know what your purpose is? How is adversity sending you even farther and stronger toward your purpose?

Are you ready to step up to Being a Star Who Serves? Please share your thoughts below...

Watch Oprah's Lifeclass Tour on Monday nights at 8PM ET/7PM CT. Watch two hours and call your life coach in the morning...