Tag Archives: life coaching

Self Help, great but pople don’t think they need help…

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Self Help has been all the rage for the past few decades but a reality check still shows, most people don’t think they need help.

The gist is indeed, people understand something is amiss but the reaction is to work more, harder and earn more money.  Last I checked, money does not bring happiness automatically, you work on making money to make you happy.  A trick and feast onto itself.

Self Help, But What For?  And exactly what is meant by Self Help anyway?  We help ourselves by working and sustaining our lives on this planet, but that doesn’t offer a complete vision of what is meant by Self Help.  Self Help is really about answering those nagging life long questions that aim to answer the root core, who am I and what am I here for.

My Self Help.  We should have a phone app called My Self Help.  It would remind you to take time to meditate.  It would give you subtle cues when the day’s perpetual motions drags you down the road to more and more tasks to attend to and situations to solve.  It’s an abyss that drags us down the road to self denial.

My Self Help App would also give you something to ponder upon, such as: “Is what I am doing here and now conducive to my highest fulfillment?” but add to it, the answer doesn’t matter, awareness is key.

All in all, the greatest Self Help I know is to ask question with a constant curiosity about life, yourself and how you fit it in all.  Answers are deeply, deeply personal.

No need for the pervailing sense of fear in our daily lives

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If you look back on the short history of marketing and advertising over the past 5 decades, one thing stands out, the messages are getting stronger and downright brutal.  People are starting to live with a sense of impending doom and daily fear.

The gist is when we look around, there surely is very little to fear in life.  If the only fear we should fear is fear itself, then what happens behind the closed doors of corporations and governments is where the real fear is created and managed.

Show Me A Peace March!  The knee jerk reaction to fear is predictable but also, avoidable.  We don’t need to watch the news if all the news shows is violence, more violence and only that.  Real life is much more subtle and there is more positive in the world than marketers and then media shows.  So why all the upheavals?

Disaster sells.  Impending doom and fear sells.  While it is easy to see why companies abuse the message and generously court politicians, it is also very easy to see that what they are creating is unsustainable.  People all around the world are realizing something is amiss, from the courageous citizens in Arab countries to you and me.  Surely we realize politic track records over the pas decades haven’t been a success, the pharmaceutical industry hasn’t “cured” anything much and the financial wizards have driven global economies down the drain.

In the meantime, I still Ghandi said it best.  The revolution starts within, not without…  Fear is not something we need to live with every day.  An intelligent hopeful, yet realistic view of the situation is what saves the day.

Not being number 1, but understanding the real power of number 2

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There is a lot of wisdom and maturity around when we grasp the idea that number is good, but the real trick is what happens with number.

The gist is everyone wants to be number.  In a goofy kind of way, if everyone was number one, nothing would get done and nothing would happen.  The real power in number one is not so much to have the idea, trend or leading thought, but to have people who understand the value and create a movement out of it.  Simply put, number is nothing without number two, the one who recognizes the inherent value and translates it into a concrete movement.

Derek Siver at the TedxSocal had a powerful message accompanied by one of those videos that really drives the point home.

In essence, being number is where the real power lies. Often times, number one gets hit of intuition that can from anywhere, literally.  The receiver of the brilliant idea doesn’t always know how to translate it into a sustainable movement.  Case in point, look at most entrepreneurs and their lack of understanding when it is time to go or surround themselves with the right people.  That is number’s position, to seek out, understand and act upon it. In many ways, number is the thinking behind any movement.

What does it mean to be a man today?

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Picture: Nick Zart

I was stomped when asked what does it mean to be a man in today’s society.

The gist is there is no manual.  It surely can’t be the stereotype weight lifter at the gym, nor the attitude guy driving his car hand on the other side of the steering wheel.  Being a man today is much dynamic, with fuller depth and surely much deeper than meets the eye.  It has to be that inner most wisdome we have neglected over the decades.

What It Means To Be A Man Today.  A man today should be many things, including something most aren’t used to, deep, in touch with their inner wisdom and feelings.  Ancient societies provided young men rites of passage, today we have no such things but to sit down and think it through.

so What Is A Man, Then?  A man who acknowledges when wrong, one who knows with quiet confidence when right, one who uses wisdom and compassion wisely.  Most of these attributes I realized were found in Dzogchen, the purest esoteric form of Tibetan Buddhism… of all place.

Here is a passage I was reading this morning on Gyalshen: “Dzogchen practice gives us a clarity that is powerful enough to recognize that whatever emotion we experience, be it anger, depression, fear, or joy is not separate from the true nature of the mind. This recognition is wisdom.  It gives us the strength to leave things as they are. Our ability to leave things as they are reduces our subconscious attachment to the conditioning that judges or manipulates our emotions. We are accepting our feelings. We are becoming aware of what we are feeling right now, and we stop right there. We don’t allow that emotion to take over our life. We do not allow it to obscure the true nature of the mind and to become an obstacle.  ”

In other word, shouldn’t a “man” be one who accepts who he is without judgement, looks at what is front of him without preconceived notions, accepting his moods and feelings as that present moment, not more, and holding that space sacred so that what is to come happens untainted from expectations?  I’m going off on a limb here but I felt a strange sense of finding a clue in an ancient esoteric tradition about what it means to be a man.  Something worth while exploring for all those young guys without guidance.  I should know…

Imagines of me

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I wake up, blink my eyes a few times as I try to recall where am I, who am I.  You see, my dreams are as vivid as what we call reality.

The gist is moving through life, we need a certain amount of self image if we are to interface and communicate with others.  The problem is that self image might not be accurate, nor are others, which can explain a lot of the current problems we run into.

Self Image As A Starting Block.  We need to start somewhere in the road to self discovery, the trick is to not take it at face value, nor take our embellished self image seriously.  We are born naked and often exit the same way, with ourselves.

While we it is equally possible to say that all is illusion, therefore nothing is real, we can always remind ourselves of this proven fact, an illusion hurting another still hurts.  The trick is maintaining that careful balance of putting one foot forward into the unknown, with a hefty amount of unknown and self illusion.  After all, we must start somewhere.

In many ways, we are like computers computing for an impossible answer with little to false data.  Ours is a strange quest and yet the answers as so simple once we fear not what lies within us.

The problem with advice is…

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Tap The Source

Tapping the source for better decision making

You pay the price…  whether success or failure follows, it’s really up to you.

The gist is friends and acquaintances are well meaning and everyone wants everyone to be happy.  Thus, finding advice is easy.  Following is not simple.  So, should you?

Choosing when and how to listen to advice, as well as when to discard it is an important skill that can bring you to the road of success, or complete failure.  Take for example these 5 advices given to Steve Jobs, head of the now very successful Apple computer company.  What would have happened had he followed them?

5. Invest heavily in Newton technology.

4. Apple should adopt Windows.

3. Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone.

2. Get out of the hardware game.

1. “What would I do? I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”

Apple has now more cash flow then the US government.  If are you facing an interesting situation and plenty of well meaning folks are ready to give you advice, should you follow them?  How about listening to everything but finding your own answers?  If you feel this paints an accurate portrait of who and where you are, then it’s time for a professionally trained coach to sift through the possibilities and unfold your potential… such as… well, Nick of course! :)

For more information: Business Insider.

The green guilt, victim of fashion?

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Tap The Source

Tapping the source for better decision making

I had a strange feeling creep up on me yesterday and realized I was feeling guilty for not being more green, or at least not outwardly pursuing the green dream.

The gist is that it’s easy to fall into the erroneous belief that everything we do must have a concrete absolute and tangible green output.  After all, everything we hear and see these days is around making our life healthier, greener and less polluted.  It’s easy to feel guilty about not consecrating your life to the green factor.  In my case, it made me smile once I scrutinized that creepy thought.

We have close to no chemicals in our household, so very little toxicity is flushed out our drains into our Oceans.  I walk or ride my bicycle pretty much every day instead of using my car.  The lights are turned off at night except when needed.  That much, we are consciously aware of our environment.  As to the thought I wasn’t directly contributing to the green movement, I realized that above all, I work with people so that they can become more aware.  The rest is up to them but my fundamental belief and hope is that once awareness sinks in, it becomes harder and harder to justify a counter-productive lifestyle.

What I got out of this little mind bend is the following.  We live in a society excessively geared towards instant gratification, tuned to outward signs of being green and tangible external actions, all making us feel good about ourselves.  While there are many people who are actively contributing to the “green movement”, I strive to raise awareness, hoping it will lead to a “greener” life in each and everyone.  Funny how thoughts creep in and how little they hold in the end.

A shopping mall on a Saturday, a glance at western society

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Picture, Nick Zart

Gasp… Horror!  A shopping mall experience on a Saturday afternoon getting back from India.

The gist is sometimes it sounds as if we live in isolation in the middle of a crowded society.  This incredible brain twister can be felt any tie we witness people rushing to be first in line, rummage through sales, drivers who have to be the first at a traffic light and then drive slowly.  Why?  Most of us live in seclusion, disconnected form others and share little sense of being part of a community.  So, here is my experience at a shopping mall.

We just got back from India where your sense of what is important seriously challenges your priorities.  We went off the beaten path and witnessed life in secondary cities.  What we saw were people living in conditions we would deplore back home, where their main worry was if they would have food on their plate tomorrow.  Yet, somehow, these people were incredibly warm, gentle, inviting, sincere, open to us with a small we rarely witnessed back in the West.  Now fast forward back in the west…

We went to Nordstrom the following Saturday feeling we needed some new clothes.  What we witnessed was so disturbing after coming from an environment so starch and harsh with reality.  We saw people elbowing each other in order to get to the best deals of the day.  We saw people who didn’t seem to have much spatial awareness, even less as to others around them.  It felt their endeavor to be the first one to get that deal trumped any other notions of life.  It was shocking, to say the least.

It’s not to diss our society.  We have everything we need to thrive and be happy, we are not educated to look within for happiness.  Their society, on the hand has little in terms of shared material wealth but have boat loads in terms of inner values and spiritual upbringing.  Would it be great finally using all that we have at our disposal?  Don’t we owe it to our parents who built our so-called modern and developed societies?  One of the best ways is to partner with a coach in order to dig deep within and have a better vantage view.

What’s in a title?

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Do titles restrict or give a good general view?

Titles can give the general idea but not the complete picture

The hardest thing I deal with when people ask me what I do is how to explain.

The gist is we are raised in a left brain thinking world, tough on those of us who are right brained thinkers and have been drilled in since kindergarten how to compartmentalize, rationalize, and categorize everything we encounter.  The problem is, the world isn’t black or white.  We come in infinite shades and our professional lives are more multi-faceted than a title suggests.

The problem is we do more than a title conveys, yet we need some form of communication protocol to get the conversation going.  After all, IT Consultant is very vague when one can code, be a strategist, or design systems, and can do all of the above.  When it comes to coaching, it gets even stickier.  Coaches wear many, many hats and defining oneself as a coach is restrictive at best.

I coach, I write, I consult, I strategize, I do energy work, I coach, I train, I design, I remove obstacles, I find solutions… what is the title I should use?

That is one of the best dilemma facing our society these days that grows out of a necessity based system to one of empowerment and fulfillment.  Do titles work at all in the end or are they restrictive and narrowing down what we truly do?

In the meantime, I’m working on ways to say and show whatI do instead of talking about it.  What about you?

Failure is nothing to be ashamed of… on the contrary

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Failure turned to success

Failure is the greatest success tacher

You the saying, when given lemon, make lemonade?  In the same spirit, you too can turn anything into something positive with the right mindset.

The gist is I heard about an exclusive and prestigious group where one has to have made 3 times a few millions dollars but with one condition, have been bankrupt at least once.  I found this idea so incredible since it shifts away the idea of being successful at any cost without having experienced the bittersweet wisdom of losing everything.  I should know.  Although I’m far from having three million dollars in three goes, I have experienced total failure.  I was ashamed of it at first but I have gotten so much out of it.

Everything I did came easy.  Everything I started worked.  I never experienced failure in the business world.  It always worked… until 7 years ago.  I failed, seriously failed, which gave me a different perspective on life and work.  I understand the bittersweet taste of working towards something, anticipating it, building it up watching the rewards slowly unravel.  I no longer can make  money for the sake of it or because it is a fun challenge.  The outcome is not as important as doing what I truly have and need to do, with the right people, for the right people.  And the funny thing is, money does flow back into your life, this time, easier.  This is one of the secrets of even greater success.

Whatever I do, whatever you do, whatever we all do, it has to fit you.  This is financial wisdom.  This is success.  This is ethics.  The only question I have for you, is what does success mean to you and how to you define personally?