Change

From Lawyer to Coach (NFL Coach, That Is)

Posted by on May 10, 2010 | 0 comments

  The story of lawyer-turned-football-coach Daron Roberts offers some great lessons on career change. Roberts turned his back on a Harvard Law School education to start from scratch and become an NFL coach. While your transition may be less dramatic, you can learn from his inspiring story. 1. You can change your career. It’s that simple (though not easy). So don’t let your past choices or inertia dictate your future career. Even after investing time and money in law school, Roberts wasn’t bound by his education. He discovered his passion through volunteering at a...

Read More

This is Only a Test

Posted by on Apr 26, 2010 | 0 comments

  Today I spoke with Gretchen Rubin, best-selling author of The Happiness Project, about her book, happiness, and coaching. Our conversation touched on the importance of taking action. Gretchen’s project was all about test-driving a wide range happiness theories and practices to see if DOING things made her FEEL HAPPIER. In pursuit of happiness, she read a lot (I mean a lot), and thought a lot, but the focus was on doing (a lot!) In my coaching practice, I expect my clients to get into action right away. Sometimes clients are caught off guard by the need to take action before they...

Read More

Get Experimental

Posted by on Apr 7, 2010 | 0 comments

  Here’s the deal: you don’t change your life by thinking really hard about it, or by dreaming, or talking about it. You change it by taking action. I just watched a talk on youtube given by my fellow coach and former co-worker, Michael Melcher. It’s a great overview of how coaching works — no hidden tricks or gimmicks. He outlines four basic pieces of career coaching that guide the process: 1. Values, 2. Vision, 3. Relationships, and 4. Experiments. Number 4 is key. Yes, you need to know what you like and what’s important to you (values), and you need to...

Read More

Where is Your Outrage?

Posted by on Feb 10, 2010 | 0 comments

  I know I’m late to the party, but I just finished reading Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, a provocative and fun to read economic analysis of many social phenomena that turned many of my assumptions on their heads. I like that. But it also sheds new light on something that I encounter often in coaching – fear of change. In their chapter on parenting, Levitt and Dubner discuss risk and demonstrate how wrong our calculations of risk frequently are. For example, many more children die from drowning in a swimming pool than by gunshot even though there relatively...

Read More

Make Your New Year’s Resolution SMART

Posted by on Jan 8, 2010 | 0 comments

  Several years ago I swore off New Year’s Resolutions. (Yes, I see the irony of that.) The annual hopeful energy and inevitable late-winter decline was a cliché, and I was too cool for all that. So I steadfastly ignored Auld Lang Syne and set personal goals willy-nilly throughout the calendar, with varying success. But as we enter a new year and a new decade, I am struck by the moment and by a desire to turn a new page and even to turn over a new leaf (how’s that for a cliché?). So then, how do we avoid the mid-February dissolution of our resolve? Make a SMART* resolution....

Read More

What Do You Want from 2010?

Posted by on Dec 13, 2009 | 0 comments

  Time Magazine’s cover last week dubbed the 2000’s “The Decade From Hell,” and many are saying “good riddance.” But what lessons have you learned, and how do you want to enter the coming year, the coming decade? With a New Year’s resolution that will be stale by February, or with an energized and rigorous plan to achieve a well-integrated set of goals that will improve your performance, satisfaction, and life balance? Now is a great time to try coaching, a collaborative relationship that helps you develop your own goals and take concrete actions to make real change....

Read More