Coaching Blog

In sports, it's called thinking like a winner vs. thinking like a loser.

In Law of Attraction terms, it's thinking that attracts what you want vs. thinking that repels what you want. I call it success thinking vs. failure thinking. Regardless, these thoughts are powerful and they can hijack your client's plans no matter how well you coach them.

Most, if not all, failure thinking comes from the Voice of the Victim, in Big Mind terms. We all have it to some degree. Ironically, the victim can jump out just when your client is about to succeed! Genpo Roshi, who pioneered the Big Mind process, says that the victim story is a cover up for disowning the voice of 'seeking power'. Read on and you'll see why.

What does failure thinking sound like? Helpless. Focused on obstacles more than goals. The client has placed power outside of him/herself and put it in their circumstances. Think: whining.

A few strategies for coaching your client to success:

1. Most of the time, your client's inner victim just needs to be heard. Usually we try to shut down our victim thoughts, but if we never voice them, they may block us from doing what we really want. Procrastination and self-sabotage are examples. Encourage your client to voice their complaints - up to a point. Five minutes of 'BMW Time' (bitch, moan & whine) at the start of the coaching session can work wonders.

Example: I had a client who hired me to help her work on her personal development just before her husband left her for another woman. She was seeing a therapist, but her husband's cruel antics threatened to dominate our coaching sessions until we established BMW Time at the start of each session and devoted the rest to her personal growth.

2.Validate how your client feels - again up to a point. Most clients just need to know that they're okay, even though they're scared. Definitely support them in that, but take care not to get caught up in the client's story. Validate the client, not their belief that they are going to fail.

3. Sometimes the client needs to upgrade his/her community. If you're client is surrounded by failure thinking, it may feel normal to them. Limiting time with the Negative Nancies and expanding time spent with folks who think positively can work wonders. Help your client develop awareness around this, so they can make empowering choices.

4. If failure thinking persists, you may have to bring out the sledgehammer.  Sometimes your client just needs you to call them on their crap. Remember, it's your job to tell the truth, but if you sense your client it too fragile to hear it, you may need to skip straight to #5. 

Example: When I was working on my MFA in Dance, I was fortunate enough to study choreography with Phyllis Lamhut, a dance legend who I consider my 1st coach. Working with Phyllis isn't for the faint hearted, but she is brilliant and she tells the unvarnished truth, which is what high achievers really want. One weekend after I performed less than my best in a concert, Phyllis shared the unvarnished truth with me in front of my entire class. Although I was sick and had several other excuses, Phyllis knew I was letting myself down. She told me I was throwing away my career, if I let all  of that get in the way. Was I crushed? Slightly. Did I get the message? You bet. Ultimately, there are no excuses; you either do what you really want or you don't.

5. If all of the above doesn't move your client out of failure thinking, they may need therapy more than coaching. If the victim has grown this powerful, you're likely hearing the voice of depression or worse. In this case, the victim has taken over; it's not just seeking power, it has enslaved it. Coaches aren't qualified to diagnose mental illness, but we are qualified to notice when our tools aren't adequate for our client's situation.

What's the difference between knowing our limits and thinking like a failure? The outcome. Failure thinking leads to failure. Recognizing limits leads to growth and new possibilities. Learn the difference and help your clients succeed.

Can new college grads find work this year, or should they just go home and live with Mom & Dad?

With the unemployment rate still hovering near 10%, new college graduates are having an awful time finding jobs this year. Transitioning from college to adult life is tough enough even when the economy is good. There's getting the job, learning to budget, pay the school loans and still buy the stuff you need, all while navigating your social and love life. That's overwhelming, right there.

But this year? For millions it's easier to just delay the whole process and move back in with the parents. Or maybe apply for graduate school and hope things get better in two more years.

Things are so bad, one frustrated NYC mother started her own website called, Get My Kid Off My Couch, with links to resume, blog, social sites, etc., showing off her daughter's skills, because both of them are desperate to get on with their lives and all it will take is just one little job.

Well here's an alternative. If your son or daughter has good communication skills (Check their cell phone bill, if you're not sure), they may want to upgrade what they already have with coaching skills for a couple of reasons.

1. There are still jobs for people who can coach. I just did a search on Indeed.com for 'coach, coaching or coaches' (and I filtered OUT  sports references like tennis, lacrosse, cheer, football, baseball, softball, basketball, etc., etc.). I got back nearly 75,000 available jobs that require coaching skills. Not bad.

2. Coaching can be a lucrative business. Some college grads are skipping the job treadmill all together and just starting their own businesses. Few businesses are as inexpensive to start up as coaching. There's no inventory, no store front, no staff needed, just a computer and a phone. And good coaching skills.

And by the way, that major transition that students go through from high school to college to first job and beyond? That's a huge coaching niche. Who better to coach young people through these major life stages a than those who have just navigated all that, themselves?

However, a very young coach needs coach training to be credible. Happily, new college grads are already good at being students and coach training costs a lot less than graduate school. And it trains them in something they can actually do, too.

For more info on how to become a coach, visit our Become a Coach Hub

I think blogging was invented for coaches.

Or it may as well have been! Blogs are a natural fit for us partly because we are social creatures and partly because we have a lot to say.

We're naturals at forming meaningful relationships, because we're all about service and listening. That makes us social. And blogs are a highly interactive, highly social form of communication.

We've got a lot to say, perhaps because of all those hours we put in while coaching, asking questions and being silent. We learn quite a lot in the process and sometimes we're bursting to share it! No wonder then that coaches write so much and create thousands of hours of audio that they share freely.

And where better to post our philosophical musings, our solutions, and our favorite tools, than on a public blog?

Blog effectively and you will attract new clients and like-minded colleagues. A blog is a marvelous place for people to get to know you. But do learn the basics of blogging before you dive in. Otherwise, your blog could be hard labor, instead of a labor of love.

In honor of the Best Coaching Blogs 2010 contest that School of Coaching Mastery is hosting right now, we're releasing a brand-new free ebook on how to get started blogging effectively for your coaching business. Even if you've never blogged before, you could be ready to win in time for Best Coaching Blogs 2011!

Get the FREE eBook below and get started with your own blog right away!

Go here to download your free copy of the 'How to Blog Effectively for Your Coaching Business' ebook

If you have trouble asking for favors, it could be that your intuition is telling you something important.

Sometimes coaches assume that if clients have difficulty asking for what they want, they just need coaching to get over their resistance and learn how to ask. However, in many cases, it's really the client's inner wisdom that's stopping them. The client may indeed need coaching, but coaching the wrong issue is just a waste of time.

Here's why. Most people have an inner barometer that tells them where they stand with others. This barometer is either instinctive or intuitive, I'm not sure which, but for our purposes, it doesn't really matter. It's the barometer that holds most people back from asking for, and getting, what they really want.

If your inner barometer is holding you back from asking for what you want, what it's telling you is that you haven't been giving enough.

If you're someone who gives your time, effort, attention, care, acknowledgment, money or whatever to others on a regular basis, with little concern for how or when it will come back to you, most others will be happy to help you when you need it. If you just give to get, on the other hand, people will avoid you. And if you're someone who rarely gives, most folks will run the other way if you ask them for very much (except, perhaps you nicest relatives).

Giving without concern for getting is the surest way to get what you want pretty much all the time.

So why don't most people give more? What's this resistance really about? Well, some people unfortunately were brought up around people who don't understand this principle, so they were just never taught, but often there is a fear underlying the failure to give. This fear masquerades as a desire to not be seen as a doormat, or not to be "taken advantage of". Have you ever worried about that?

If you're concerned that giving more will cause people to take advantage or perceive you as a doormat, you've got a different kind of a problem. This is a matter of you and your own boundaries, not that other people are out to take advantage.

Any time you find yourself worrying that people might take advantage if you offer to do more for them, what you're really worried about is that you won't take care of yourself adequately by identifying what your boundaries are and communicating them. If you do that, few people will ever take advantage of you and those that do will be fairly easy to deal with. 

It's up to you to say "No" now and then and once you learn how, you're free to give with abandon and thoroughly enjoy it. Not only that, but people who tend to take advantage of others (known as "energy vampires") will naturally give up trying to get more out of you and focus on some other victim. Whereas people who are givers (Read: People who are good at saying "No") will naturally be more attracted to you and they'll be happy to help next time you need some assistance with something.

So when that resistance to ask for a favor, or a sale, or even a few moments of someone's time comes up for you, ask yourself what's it's telling you. If you haven't been giving enough, you've got some work to do and the first step is to set some boundaries.

To get more of what you want, learn to say, "No". 

Read tomorrow's blog post for ways to say, "No". 

From a Law of Attraction perspective, I guess it's no surprise that I won 2 contests in the past week: I'm also running the Best Coaching Blogs Contest and giving tips to the contestants on how to win it! :)

Still, I don't enter that many contests, so it feels really fresh to suddenly be a two-time winner. The first contest was just a nice surprise. One week ago I found out on Twitter that I'd won a $100 Gift Certificate to Amazon from Dimdim.com, the webinar company whose platform I love.

Yippee! All I did was retweet their announcement that they were a winner in the Webware 100 contest. So now I have a tough choice to make: spend $100 on some of those cool books that are on my Amazon Wishlist, or invest in a nifty Flip camcorder?

However winning 'The Peppered Customer of the Year' contest just about launched me into outer space!

What this means is that I get free virtual assistance for one whole year from Pepper Virtual Assistant, a great new company that 'gets it' and is doing really professional work. If you know me and my business then you know we're at that awkward stage where we need a lot more assistance without breaking our budget, so this is a dream come true!

How did I hear about the contest? My friend, Barbra Sundquist tweeted about it. Barbra found Pepper because she tweeted that she was looking for a virtual assistant that would work for free to help out a non-profit and Pepper volunteered.

Now I'm blogging about Barbra, Pepper and Dimdim. Are you seeing a pattern here?

If you want to be a winner:

1. Be ready to help other folks out.
2. Get on Twitter.

I invite you to follow me @MasteryCoach on Twitter. I post great quotes, retweet other people's stuff and report on cool companies and resources.

I also tweet updates on Best Coaching Blogs 2009. Help out some bloggers there by voting and commenting on their blogs. Then maybe go tweet about it...