I know life is great

"The only reason they come to see me
is that I know that life is great-
and they know I know it."

 ~Clark Gable

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Someone wrote in to ask, "What's the best way to determine what to charge for business coaching IF one is just starting out with little to no coaching experience or results to point to whatsoever?"

Good question. If you are to be my coach I'm only wondering one thing: Can you help me? I don't really care that much about your past history. So sit with me and work with me for a couple hours and let me experience being with you. At the end of that time, if you have truly helped me, I will pay your fee. So focus on the transformation that happens when a coach works with a client. Rather than the "story" about you and your credentials.

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Depression Spreads Through Social Networks, Mainly By Women

First we learned that obesity appears to spread though social networks; now comes a report from researchers at Harvard claiming that depression does the same thing. The researchers tracked evidence of depression in a social network of 12,067 people who were part of the Framingham Heart Study for more than 32 years. An abstract in Molecular Psychiatry reports that depression was "strongly correlated" with depression in friends and neighbors, and extended up to three degrees of separation--friends of friends of friends. The researchers found that female friends were "especially influential in the spread of depression from one friend to another."

Read an abstract of the study in Molecular Psychiatry. 

* * * * * * * 

That's a photo of me and one of the world's great coaches, Stephen McGhee.

Many people who have been my coaching clients believe they need credibility (a good story) before they will be hired.  So they waste precious hours and days on getting the word out.  Or building their resumes.  Or going to a school to get certified.

I've coached and trained over 30 Fortune 500 companies and I have never been "certified."  Nor did I ever have or need any credentials.  All they wanted to know was if the mindshift I was teaching would work.  So I demonstrated it and they hired me.  That's all anyone wants to know.  Can you help?  Can you help me?  That's the only question you'll ever have to answer.

Certifications, degrees, trophies, uniforms and big homes that look like mortuaries are not actually what the world is looking for.  Even though it's what everyone pursues. (In the quest to have the story of me be impressive to the story of you.) Your belief system, once you can see what it is, will tell you (and your coach) why you are so afraid.  What's holding you back.  Why you'll never be enough.

I can act faster from empty space than I can huddled in the thicket of networking and "credibility."  Pushing through the thicket in the woods, I am restricted.  Poison ivy.  Sharp branches scratch my face.  That's what it's like to have a mind overgrown with judgments, worries and doubts.  Thinking becomes a thicket.

But give me space.  Give me land (lots of land) with the starry skies above.  And I can whirl.  I can dance like Muhammad Ali.  Float.  Sting.

You need space for that.  Stories bind you up and fence you in.  Fears sweep in like the monkeys in the Wizard of Oz.  Monkeys aren't supposed to fly, but the story-telling mind can make them evil and even make them fly.

There's a story about what it means to be 63.  In fact there are many stories to choose from about what it means to be 63.  Some people say "60 is the new 40."  Because people are living to be in their 90's now whereas they only used to live to be in their 70's.  So 60 is the new 40!  I'm only 43!  Yahoo!

But being 63 itself is just a story.  Because truly my age is now!  Am I alive now?  Yes.  (As I'm writing this.  I may not be as you're reading this-and of course I'm referring to future generations.)

Now or not now.  Those are the two ages people have, really.  I know people in their sixties who shuffle around like death warmed over and people in their 90's who wake up and run and dance and laugh and swim and sing and play.  So it's really just now or not now.

I know that life is great.

Comments

[canada goose sale]

I learn more from this post. It's very worth to red.

[birkenstock outlet]

So fun article is! I agree the idea!

[air yeezy]

My love can only be your own!

[Rich Procter]

Wow. Typically brilliant bit of Chandlerana. As always, he points out that the truth (Just Help People) is hiding in plain sight, and the secret to finding success is to get out of your own way, stop complicating things and just do it (or, as Steve Covey says, "The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing." THANK YOU. Another brilliant distinction

[discount coach]

when you're down, and the world seems dark and empty, Your forever friend lifts you up in spirits and makes that dark and empty world suddenly seem bright and full.

[Richard]

Fantastic, Steve. Your first paragraph speaks to my current situation and doubts and yet when I am with someone, 'it' happens. Thankyou for your blogs and club fearless, I have a supportive sense of community.

Richard