Personal Coaching - Week Three

I must say I am surprised how much I've learned and implemented in my life these past three weeks from just this little bit of coaching.

I've established three goals that I'm actually working on right now. I've broken them down into smaller goals and am seeing accomplishment.

This week, however, I realized I needed to change one of my goals. I realized that I need to put my writing at the top of the list and concentrate on that, since that is the gift that I've been given. So, that's what I'm setting out to do.

I've reviewed what I accomplished last week, and what I did NOT accomplish last week. Then, I considered why certain things were not accomplished and what, if anything, got in the way.

Next, I've made goals to accomplish for this week - the smaller goals to reach the final goal. Then, I decided what actions I needed to take in order to accomplish those smaller goals.

Remember discussing "tolerations" in a previous blog? Well, I've also addressed three tolerations this week. One of them was to throw out a few small kitchen appliances that I rarely use. But, after discussing this with my husband - well, he would like to hang on to them for a little while longer, so I scratched that one off of my list. Instead of that, I shampooed the dog - which was long overdue. Boy, let me tell ya' - I was SO glad I switched those tolerations. Whew!

Next I made a list of small nurturing things I would do for myself this week - you know, fun things I like to do.

And last of all, I wrote down something for which I was grateful.

This past week has been very productive for me, as far as coaching goes. I worked on three goals, realizing that one of them needed to be changed, I made a new friend and made a lunch date with an old friend, cleaned off my desk (which took all of five minutes tops), colored my hair, bathed the dog, read my book, watched an old classic movie, blogged and realized how grateful I am for the opportunity to experience this personal coaching thing.

This weekend I'm going to work on a visual anchor for my goals. I think I'm going to create a vision board and put up a collage of pictures of the goals I'm achieving. I think that will be fun. Apparently, having that in front of your face throughout the day causes you to subconsciously work towards these things.

Since setting goals and getting rid of tolerations, I have become more satisfied and at peace within my spirit. Who knew?

Action Creates Results - Results Create Motivation

"Persistence is the ability to maintain actions regardless of feelings. You press on even when you feel like quitting. When you work on any big goal, you're motivation will wax and wane like the waves hitting the shore. Sometimes you'll feel motivated, sometimes you won't. But it's not your motivation that creates results - it's your action. Persistence allows you to keep taking action even when you don't feel motivated to do so, and therefore you will keep accumulating results. Persistence will ultimatley provide it's own motivation. If you simply keep taking action, you'll eventually get results, and results can be very motivating." ~ Zig Ziglar

This quote was given to me today from my personal coach. It really inspired me and opened up my eyes.

Today's assignment was to pick one goal to work on next week from the ten goals previously created. One of my goals was motivation, but I changed it, realizing that with persistence, motivation will come. So, I changed motivation to loving. I will try to become more loving this year.

But, for next week, my goals to work on will be to continue to lose weight, increase my circle of friends and learn some marketing skills.

I'm already working on the first two. I've started counting my Weight Watcher points - which I hate. However, my coach highly recommends the South Beach diet. One of the people in our group has been trying it this month and has already lost considerable weight. So, I think I will read that book this week.

And my circle of friends - well, I've started taking a Bible study class at church and there are about twenty ladies in that group. So, I should be able to increase my circle from within that group somewhat.

And the marketing - well - I need to learn this in order to be able to do what I want to do and I am so intimidated by this. However, I WILL overcome it this year.

Action creates results and results create motivation.

That's all the time I have for today.
Watch me grow!

Personal Coaching - Second Week

I've started my second week of personal coaching.

So far, I have written down pages and pages of goals. Then, under each category, I chose a "Thrilling Goal". A thrilling goal is something that you would do if there were nothing to hinder you at all - no fears, money wasn't an issue, etc. So, I have four of those - one under each category.

Then I have created a list of about 25 tolerations. Tolerations, in the coaching world, is a word that is used for things that you put up with in your daily life. For instance, one of my tolerations is dim lighting in our home. It seems it is never bright enough in any room for me to be able to read. And some of the lighting we have comes on slowly and gradually - my husband's love - not mine. When I turn a light on, I want the light to come on - not have to wait for it to warm up so I can see several minutes later. So, that's a toleration for me. And, yes, I have a list of twenty-five. My coach instructed us to make a list of ten to twenty-five and I was going to stop at ten, but - hey - I was on a roll. What can I say?

Next step was to create a list of ten goals that I want to accomplish this year. That was easy enough because I had all the goals previously listed from my four categories. So, I grabbed some from there and wrote them down.

Then I had to pick "BE" words. These are words that describe how I want to be. As the coach pointed out, we define who we are oftentimes by what we do. "I'm a teacher. I'm a secretary. I'm a doctor." This exercise is to help you define who you are by what you want to be - or how you already are. So, I picked three "BE" words and then after I wrote them, I went back and put the word "very" in front of my "BE" words.

After listing ten goals to accomplish for this year and picking three "BE" words, the coach instructed us to go back to the list of ten goals and write how we will BE by accomplishing these goals.

By doing this last exercise, I could clearly see that by accomplishing my goals I become who I want to be. And then I realized that even if I didn't accomplish the goal this year, just the fact that I've tried will help me become who I want to be.

So, here I go on my way to becoming:
1. Very self-confident
2. Very motivated
3. Very prosperous

Watch me grow!

Tolerations - Energy Drains

My personal coach today had a simple assignment - to make a list of things that we tolerate - energy drains - things we put up with for whatever reason. I made my list of about 20 things - some big, some small, some take a little money, some a lot of money and some no money at all. So, I'm interested to see where she is going with this.

I've also been listening to Tony Robbins on some old cassette tapes. I've been getting a lot of good information from those, as well. He's been discussing goals and why we need them. He said that we need to find out WHY we want a particular goal. The "why" is the incentive. So, today his assignment for goals was for personal development, things that you want - if money, time, etc. were no object and financial goals. Then he had us go back over each goal and define how many years it would take to achieve each goal - one year, three years, five years, ten years and twenty years. After that was determined, I took three from each category for the one year goals and DID SOMETHING on that goal TODAY.

So, today, I exercised, worked on some marketing skills, and I'm going to dance at home with my husband tonight - but, he doesn't know it yet. :-)

So, set some goals for yourself, determine a timeline and do something to achieve that goal today. You'll be one day ahead of the game.

"If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten."

Having a Personal Coach

I entered a drawing over the weekend to see if I could win a full year of personal coaching.

I wasn't picked for the full year, but I won a "consolation" prize of coaching for one month. I was ecstatic because I really didn't expect to win anything at all. The coach told me that I would probably only need one month anyway, from the information she gathered about me in my entry.

So, yesterday I was given 8 categories of goals. I had to pick 5-15 goals for each category. The categories are as follows: Career, Fun/Creativity, Fitness/Health, Relationships, Home/Clutter, Self-care/Appearance, Personal Growth/Spirituality/Serivce and Money.

In addition to the 5-15 goals I had to choose for each category, I had to choose one thrilling goal - meaning that if nothing got in my way, what would I want to achieve in that category.

It was fun choosing the goals. I was given a list in case I couldn't think of things. It was interesting to see what things I'm already doing, what things I've already done and what things I want to do.

Today I had to make a list of 3-5 nurturing rituals - things that I want to do. I picked six because I was on a roll. So, my list consists of: Facebook; listening to various types of music throughout the day; wearing a small squirt of my perfume around the house - even if I'm the only one at home; talking daily with long distance family; reading and watching old black and white classic movies.

I'm excited to see where I'm going to be in the next month. Follow along and let me know how you think I'm doing. I'd love to hear feedback.