So, it’s not my usual style to talk a lot about myself in a blog post… but here in the states, it’s gratitude time with Thanksgiving this Thursday… so I wanted to reveal a bit more about me.

My greatest teachers…

You. I’m so lucky to serve heartful, brilliant people like you. I’m so honored that you read my blog, share your thoughts and allow me to shine some light on your path to greatness. From you, I’m continually learning to let go of attachment, value diversity, and listen more deeply. Enlightenment!

My life partner, Seth. He’s contributed so much to my well being and Prosperous Coach by researching for me, managing cash flow, editing my content, and continually coaching me to stay true to what’s most important.

My amazing Online Business Manager, Raven Howard. She’s wise, smart as a whip, quick as a runaway train, and she keeps me sane. Raven constantly teaches me to plan well, own my authority and celebrate everything!

My kitty, Freya. At only 7 months old, she’s teaching me to totally give myself over to love with just a bit of fierceness.

My body. It ever teaches me to be in the moment and breathe, accept and transform.

My fears. They teach me to stand in my power and cross thresholds without looking back.

Who or what are your greatest teachers?

What I’m learning right now…

I’m learning to set stronger energetic boundaries, expand what brings me great joy, give without strings, and relax into everything.

What are you learning right now?

My big goals for 2012…

To take two full-month vacations, double my profits, run four big blowout promotions, work only 25 hours each week, learn Spanish and take dancing lessons.

What are your big goals for 2012?

Thank you for listening and please share in the comments below.

Also I have a gift coming for you… starting Friday 11/25, as a huge thank you to all my loyal followers, I’m having a 72-hour only special. So be sure you’re subscribed to my blog to get 50 – 60% off my Prosperous Coach products.

SHARE YOUR COMMENTS ONLINE AT: This is Me Being Personal with You…

I believe that what’s going on in the world right now is one of the reasons why the field of coaching has burgeoned. It takes a conscious act to stay in balance in these times. And coaches remind people to stand in their power, hold their center and direct their actions with integrity.

Empaths, who have empathy in spades, have naturally gravitated to coaching as a career. I’m in that subgroup and attract a lot of clients who are too. If you are an empath, chances are you lose track sometimes of where you begin and end.

Even if this never happens to you, I bet some of your coaching clients can relate and it’s helpful to be aware of the unique challenges that empaths face.

It’s More Critical Than Ever to Regain Your Center

The world needs empathy – and here’s the paradox. For empaths, when the world is most in need is exactly the time we most need to take care of ourselves. We need a strong daily practice to recover our center, boundaries, and vitality. Then we can serve from strength.

Here are 6 ways to recover your center:

Go on a media diet. I’m not just talking about the news. Turn off anything that has an on-off switch. Give yourself a rest from all that frenetic input. If possible do this for a few days or weeks, or at the very least have sacred times to be completely unplugged every day while you’re awake.

Go outside. Become a cloud, bird or plant watcher. Spring is a great time for this, but nature calms your nervous system anytime you tap in there. Cultivate an appreciation for natural beauty and let it influence your mind, body and spirit.

Laugh. Break your media fast with a movie that makes you laugh out loud. Or better, book some face time with a grounded friend and laugh out loud together. Find the humor, even if you feel more like crying.

Keep the best company. Seek the most grounded people you know and hang out with them. Let your best allies remind you of who you truly are.

After connecting, disconnect. Every connection with another person, whether on the phone, in person, or on Facebook, creates a living energetic line of connection. When you’re done connecting, disconnect consciously. Ask your mind and heart to lovingly release the stories connected to people as well.

Reconnect with yourself. Look in the mirror to check in without the critique. Simply reconnect through your eyes with who you are. Then ask yourself what are truly your own emotional and physical feelings.

Be alone on purpose. There’s a difference between solitude and isolation. The purpose of solitude is to rest into your self. Rediscover the infinite spring of resource within you.

As human beings we have a responsibility to care about what others are going through, but it helps not to take it personally. Calling someone “detached” has a whiff of insult, but for us empaths, detachment is just what the doctor ordered.

The trick is to keep your perception and understanding of the other’s experience, but stay with your own separate experience at the same time. That’s called compassion.

What about the rest of you empaths out there? What are your favorite techniques to keep yourself sane and centered in trying times?

SHARE YOUR COMMENTS ONLINE AT: Experiencing Empathic Overload? 6 Ways to Recover Your Center

It’s not really a question if you already know the answer.

That’s true about the most powerful coaching questions.

Learning to draw out your client’s wisdom rather than impose your own agenda is one of the foundations of coach training. Is it time to refresh that lesson? It’s so easy to get caught up in the task list and learning curves, and forget to lead with curiosity in a coaching session.

No matter how insightful you are (and you are insightful!) the most impactful moments in coaching are drawn out of your clients themselves. There’s no formula for those moments.

That’s why open-ended questions generally work better than yes-or-no questions in coaching. They leave the field open to the unexpected. The conversation can go in any direction from an open-ended question, and that leaves space for the magic to arrive.

Coaching magic can be courted, but it can’t be forced. No list of “canned” coaching questions holds the key to that transformational shift your client is on the threshold of.

How do you call magical coaching moments into being? By being fully present with your client, ready to go wherever the moment leads.

A lot goes into that kind of mindfulness, but its essence is simple. Call it witnessing with acceptance. Call it showing up for what shows up. Or call it trust – trust in the client’s wisdom, and your own.

This kind of trust can only be learned through “live” experience coaching real clients – and the more the better. But even the most experienced coaches can’t force the magic. All any of us can do is hold space for it to appear. And sometimes experience can betray you, if it leads you to lean too heavily on what has worked before.

I have my own storehouse of powerful coaching questions, which evolves over time. The Coaching Commons has published a list of brilliant coaching questions from their readers. Maybe there are certain questions you rely on too, because they work over and over again.

Like the other tools in your coaching toolbox, these favorite questions are valuable in themselves, but they are more valuable for the experiences you went through to learn them. Whether those experiences felt positive or negative at the time, they taught you something about what you can trust, in yourself and in your clients.

So go ahead and develop your list of questions, but make no mistake – the truly great coaching questions arise in the magic of the moment.

When you have been through enough sessions where something magical happens, you’ll believe in the serendipity of it, and see how it can’t be controlled. You can open to it, but you can’t will it into being.

If you enter a coaching session like entering a performance, you will limit what can occur. Instead, read your client’s session prep before the session, let your curiosity arise, jot a question or two – but then release any attachment to your preparation, and to your ideas about what the outcome will be, so you enter the session relaxed, grounded and fully present.

Then you have done all you can do. If the moment is right, your natural curiosity will lead you to that truly great coaching question. And your client’s answer will surprise and delight both of you.

It’s your turn. Share your favorite coaching questions by commenting below.

SHARE YOUR COMMENTS ONLINE AT: The Essence of a Great Coaching Question

RELATED ARTICLES:

• 5 Ways to Right Size Yourself to Empower Your Coaching Clients
• Coaching Clients – Can We Want Too Much for Them?

Never want more for your clients than they want for themselves.

That woke me up! I began to examine my motivations and set healthier boundaries for myself with clients.

Have you ever sensed that you might want too much for your clients?

Most coaches fall into this trap on some level, until they let go of their desire to effect change on their clients, and replace it with an understanding that what is best for the client is only what the client is ready to commit to change within themselves right now.

We can never know the path of another person. If we react protectively, anticipating our client’s pitfalls and mistakes, are we keeping them from valuable experiences that may bring success more quickly? If we jump in to solve their problems and salve all their hurts too vigorously, will we somehow take away their power?

The real beauty of coaching is the co-creative relationship: where coach and client focus collaboratively to draw out and utilize the client’s wisdom toward high payoff actions. The coach trusts that the client is creative, resourceful and whole. In other words they are fully capable of taking care of themselves.

Let’s explore the symptoms, causes and side effects when we want too much for our coaching clients.

Symptom: Over-delivery in the sample session

Cause: Trying to find solutions for every issue raised, rather than focusing on one coachable moment that will move the client toward a perspective shift and the takeaway stated in their agenda.

Side effect: The client does not hire you.

The client is overwhelmed by your desire to help them beyond their current level of commitment to help themselves. How are big problems solved? One small integrate-able step at a time. Support your clients to make leaps in their perspective, and to make more progress on their own between sessions.

Symptom: Feeling drained after a session

Cause: Stepping out of the co-creative role and pushing your energy out onto the client in an effort to correct, fix or “save the client from themselves.”

Side effect: The client progresses slowly and you lose confidence.

At its best, coaching energizes both the client and the coach. Focus on listening closely for the client’s wisdom, using intuitive responses and questions to invite powerful shifts. Take it easy.

Symptom: Doing the client’s work for them

Cause: Abandoning the co-creative role to influence the client from a consultative, teacher or parental role.

Side effect: The client is disempowered. You overwork for your fee.

There is no doubt that you know many valuable things. Put that content into articles, products, training programs and public speaking for your target market. In coaching sessions, let your client’s wisdom reign. Provide short cuts and resources only after you’ve thoroughly drawn out and endorsed their own ideas. Never do their work for them just because you can.

In all of these cases, what’s being unknowingly sacrificed is the co-creative relationship — the very thing that makes coaching so powerful for clients!

A few words about your client’s strong emotions…

Anger, frustration, guilt, grief, sorrow — are natural feelings that usually move on. They don’t define a person or their future, and rarely indicate that something is wrong with the client. And, here’s the thing, even if something is “wrong”, it’s not up to you to make it all better.

Deep, and even dark, feelings are often the herald of something very right in the works. Simply validate those feelings and support the client to do their own work during these times. If through their tears and rants, you continually hold that they are creative, resourceful and whole, they will come through shining even brighter!

We’re all connected. When you are “right sized” about your responsibility to others and especially clients, they are empowered to take better care of themselves.

SHARE YOUR COMMENTS ONLINE AT: Coaching Clients – Can We Want Too Much for Them?

RELATED ARTICLES:

• 5 Ways to Right Size Yourself to Empower Your Coaching Clients
• Consults: The #1 Easiest Way to Enroll Coaching Clients

The moments with the biggest impact in my retreats are when powerful questions get asked at just the right time. The right question can do more to motivate a coaching client into playing a bigger game than reading a whole bookshelf of inspirational books or attending several ‘how to’ seminars. Why is that? Questions, when phrased and timed well, entice us to go inside and look around the many rooms of our heart-mind. We emerge knowing ourselves better than we did before.

Here are seven great coaching questions to ask your clients, or yourself!
1. What do you want?
2. What’s holding you back?
3. What is it costing you to continue holding back?
4. How do you want to change your mind’s programming on that topic?
5. What new habits will you put in place to fortify your new mindset?
6. What is the most meaningful action you could take now?
7. What new skills or support systems will ensure your success?

These are just simple coaching questions. But even the most successful coaching clients will get continual value out of these kinds of questions. The right question can help anyone zoom past obstacles and into a power zone of action and attraction.

Anatomy of a Powerful Question

All powerful questions:
- Come from a place of genuine curiosity.
- Are direct, simple and usually open-ended.
- Generate creative thinking and surface underlying information.
- Encourage self reflection.

A question is most powerful when neither the asker nor the responder knows the answer, until the question is answered. Think about it. If we can ask our coaching clients questions that bring out fresh information, we’ve brought about growth and transformation.

Keeping the Inquiry Alive

What makes the right question even more powerful? When you probe for deeper answers. One question may only scratch the surface. If you want to coach in the most masterful way, take the question to its deepest conclusion by asking the simple follow up question: And what else?

See how this simple follow up deepens the question and draws more from the coaching client:

What do you want? And what else?
What’s holding you back? And what else?
What is it costing you to continue holding back? And what else?
See what I mean?

The best treasures are buried deep. Try these questions on yourself and then use them to support your clients as well.

SHARE YOUR COMMENTS ONLINE AT: Seven Powerful Coaching Questions

RELATED ARTICLES:

• The Essence of a Great Coaching Question