I have been coaching for over 20 years. When I began and used the title “Coach”, the common question was which sport? For those who know me, they can attest to the fact that is an “odd” question; I’ve never been an athlete. While I dabbled at racquetball, tennis, golf and even running over the years, athletics in not my strong suit.
My coach training came at a pivotal time when many things in my life had (were) changing and dreaming had become more challenging. I was a fairly recent widow (at a young age), in a relatively new community, was employed as a non-profit Executive Director which I had loved though was changing. At that time, I was introduced to Julio Olalla, a charismatic person who led a leadership & coaching training organization and was drawn to his work.
I enrolled in the Newfield Network Leadership & Coaching Mastery program and life’s journey took me down a new path and opened my “dream catcher” again. My learning led to amazing transformations personally and professionally. Self-awareness was paramount to the transformations. While I have been a “self-improvement junkie” from an early age, I learned I was clueless to my inner self and being.
As a result of the transformation professionally, I resigned my ED role and struck out on a sabbatical to discover what I wanted to be this time when I grew up … a continual process for me over the years (professionally, I’ve ALWAYS made a change when my work became less that satisfying). The next three months allowed for reflection, dreaming and ultimately the start of my coaching practice, Prisma LLC.
Through the last 20 years, my coaching journey has always included continued learning; to be sure, learning has ALWAYS been a part of my life. However, the learning in the last many years has been some of the most significant. How self-aware are we? How often do we take time to reflect on what we want? How many times are we intentional about choices or do we say yes when we prefer no? These are just some of the questions that led to profound learning for me, personally and have allowed me to “create” life vs. let life just happen.
On my recent learning journey, I was introduced to a relatively new topic, building mental fitness through Positive Intelligence (PQ). Essentially, the science and practice of developing mastery over your mind so you can handle life’s challenges with greater ease. While I was quite confident that I was very clear about myself, this study led to even deeper awareness of ME. By tapping more deliberately my inner essence, my Sage wisdom, dreams began to manifest.
The core of the work leads to identifying those nasty negative messages that ramble around regularly. In PQ lingo we call them “saboteurs”! I bet you have some rambling right now “I’m not good enough”, “not pretty enough”, “not smart enough”. What are your repetitive negative messages? We all have them. In fact, there is some research that supports that even a positive person has thousands per day.
The “master saboteur” is our JUDGE, we all have one of those who is supported by nine others. While I was not surprised by the saboteurs I uncovered, the realization deepened my awareness and has offered me practices to quiet those little “brain rats” (I like to call them).
You will want to catch future posts as I introduce you to how to become more mentally fit so that anxiety and stress are reduced, satisfaction is increased and you are able to live your DREAM! What is your dream? How are you living it? Reach out for a conversation.
