 BeDo Bits Coaching Newsletter
"BE" a successful coach, "DO"powerful coaching
...one BIT at a time.
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Ben, join the calls and explore, deepen, and discover your coaching skills at a
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Every 2nd Tuesday
and 4th Wednesday of every month.
Our next call is
Wednesday, March 24 at 2:00 pm CST
(new number)
1-402-237-2524 PIN: 2336#
We'll explore the wonderful skill of
"Acknowledgment
Visit my website http://www.bedo.org/coaches/skills-calls.html for more information, and the complete 2009 calendar.
(Get your CCEU's for being on the calls.)
Listen to our last call, "Requesting" here.
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"Creating Awareness"
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402.237.2103 PIN: 6969# to join in the fun. (CCEU's are available for joining in the fun.)Visit the CCF website for more information.Hope to see you there. |
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Dear Ben,
Welcome to BeDo Bits--little insights and nudges to help you discover the power of coaching in our everyday lives. It's my passion and commitment to help coaches discover deeper confidence and strengthen their skill set, while becoming more powerful coaches in the world. I hope you find these Bits valuable to your coaching growth. SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT
It's still not to late to jump in on "The Fast Pass to Master Coaching." an exciting class for advanced and certified coaches to help you on your path toward coaching mastery. And all for less than $160 a month. COME ON!!! You can't beat that deal anywhere! And don't forget to explore the rest of this super-packed issue. Enjoy the BEing words to help deepen your experience of yourself. Use the DOing phrases to support you in shaping your outside world. CINEMA INSPIRATIONS uses quotes from your favorite films to help support you. And of course, the legendary BITS--everyday learning and experience that help you learn more about the power of BEing a powerful, successful, and confident coach. If you really like this E-Zine, please take a moment to click this link and forward this newsletter to other coaches so they can take advantage of this information as well. Together we all can help grow each other, bit by bit. |
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Your BEing word for the day
This is your BEing word to focus on for the day. For everything you say and do, keep this intention.
for many of us, we have strong Values of Listening, and we usually look at it one way or the other. Usually we have to work on our Listening skill, practice shutting up ("If you're talking, you're not listening") and giving someone else a platform. And then there are others who are mightily skilled at listening, perhaps a little too much and are working on stepping in.
Regardless of where you are on that side, there's also the part about BEing Listened To. It's valuable, it's important to each and every one of us.
(And before I get any response, I'll clarify that it shows up differently for everyone, but at the core, we all want to be Listened To in some capacity and form.)
The trick about BEing Listened To is that we probably should have something worth BEing Listened To about. In other words, I should be saying something of value.
Well, that may be true (possibly) if we were only talking about verbal communication. Perhaps there are many other ways we get to BE Listened To. Our body, our energy, our silence, our emotion... all of our communication tools.
And there is no way that anyone will really every listen to us, if we aren't willing to Listen To ourselves.
Yes, we need to Listen To others, but we also need to Listen To ourselves.
Why?
Two major reasons. Out of all the people in the world, we spend the most time with our own selves. No one else comes close. So if you are listening to yourself, that's a powerful way to affirm ourselves.
Also, we're practicing the art and skill of Listening To, so that we can easily apply it to others.
And finally (ok, so I lied, there are actually three) how we treat ourselves is how we train the rest of the world to treat us.
So begin begin by BEing Listened To by others, and it starts by by Listening To yourself.
Some tips to help you keep your focus on your BEing word for the week.
- Write it down and post it somewhere where you can always see it.
- Keep it in your pocket on a 3x5 card.
- Involve others, tell a friend what you're focusing on.
- Come up with your own brilliant idea.
- BE it every day.
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| DO |
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Objects in motion, stay in motion.
In each of the upcoming issues we'll look at "The 11 Major Attributes of Leadership as defined by Napoleon Hill. Each of these qualities are are simple, and yet extremely powerful tools that we can employ to create powerful leadership in our lives. By recognizing and consciously focusing our energy and attention
on using them, you can create amazing results.
This week's attributes:
"The man who cannot control himself,
can never
control others. Self-control sets a
mighty example for one's followers, which the more intelligent will
emulate."
Funny, I selected the BEing and DOing's separately, and yet, amazing how it's really illustrating the same idea.
You know the drill. I recommend that you take a 3x5 card and write this down. (You'll see why in a minute)
A) On a scale of 1 to 10, what would you rate your satisfaction?
2) Now, look at the next number up (don't jump to a 10 yet). What would it be like?
III) Now, what is one thing you can do this week to take yourself towards the next number (one small step)?
four) Commit to DOing it. And do it every day.
Now take your card and put it in your pocket. Carry it with you wherever you go. Look at it, remember the action that you are taking on. And when you have accomplished it, give yourself a big check mark.
For extra fun, I am willing to be your accountability partner. Simply email me your action step to the address below and your "by when" date and I'll check in on you by email to celebrate your achievement.Congratulations in advance on your success!!! |
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| CINEMA INSPIRATIONS |
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Words of wisdom from the silver screen
CHIPS: (laughs) what extraordinary ideas come into one's
head up here.
KATHERINE: It's the altitude
CHIPS: Do you experience a sort of exhilaration?
KATHERINE: Definitely
CHIPS: As though we owned the mountain?
KATHERINE: To put it mildly.
CHIPS: We're pretty superior persons.
KATHERINE: We're gods.
CHIPS: Up here there's no time.
No growing old. Nothing lost.
KATHERINE: We're young.
CHIPS:
We believe in ourselves.
KATHERINE: We have faith in the future"
- Robert
Donat and Greer Garson as Mr. Chips and Katherine in "Goodbye Mr. Chips" (1939)
Imagine that this is the first conversation that you have with someone you've just met. Now picture having that conversation on top of a misty mountain, unable to see two feet in front of your nose. Sound has dissipated and all you can hear is the
wind whispering among the peaks. Your whole reality is right here and right now. Of course it's
easy to feel this way. Everything is
possible. Time has stopped.
At least that's how it was for these two. If you've seen the movie, you'll know what follows is the more popular quote uttered by Katherine, "It must be tremendously interesting to be a schoolmaster, to watch boys
grow up and help them along; to see their characters develop and what
they become when they leave school and the world gets hold of them. I
don't see how you could ever get old in a world that's always young." And while it's a great illustration of different perspectives, for my money, the one above has much more power. We could also use this as an example of how one man can touch so many lives. Or, regardless of how ordinary he may feel, his life is truly extraordinary. And then there's the belief that perhaps this "mountain" experience is possible for each and every one of us.
At least if we look at it through coaching eyes.
It seems that I have a variation of this dialogue with just about every client I've worked with. Every coach I've interacted with on calls or in person shares these words, and even those in a non coaching capacity seem to year for this feeling--that we could just could just disappear in the
clouds, away from the burdens, duties, responsibilities, identities, and everything in the "real" world, and feel like there's no time. That we're young. That we truly believe in ourselves. And that we can have faith in the future.
 And what if, perhaps, this is a bit like what our clients
experience when talking with us? What if
we get to take them to the top of the mountain, where the rest of the "real"
world disappears?
In fact, who needs a mountain?
This week, experience the exhilaration with your client. Together you can feel like Gods, if only for the session, where anything is possible.
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| BITS |
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Little Bits of insight from everyday life to help your coaching grow.
"Stop, Look, and Listen."
I'd like to introduce you to a friend of mine, Roland.
I met Roland a couple weeks ago, while wandering downtown after a meeting. He and I got to talking and he was telling me about how just 40 days ago he was raped and beaten and left in an alley. He's been ignored, yelled at, shunned and degraded in any way you could imagine (even been spit on by someone he was asking for help), and he's had to swallow every single ounce of pride he ever had just to begin his day.
I should clarify that Roland is homeless. Yes, he committed a crime, yes, he paid his time, and now he has found God, gone straight, and tried every way he can conceive to turn his life around. For you and me, it's hard enough, but for him it's like trying to turn a giant oil tanker around on dry land with a spool of thread.
So why did I stop and talk with him? I don't really know. Normally, I'm like everyone else, and I just walk on by, pretending not to notice this embarrassment of society. Occasionally I'll find it in my gracious heart to sift through the change in my pocket and toss a few coins in the cup--a token gesture of how wonderful and caring I am to all of humanity.
But this time, even before he spoke, something tapped me on the back of my head (on the inside) and said, "Wait a minutes. You need to stop and listen."
He didn't ask for money. What he did was ask if I could share a prayer with him.
It didn't seem like such an infringement on my own life. A couple minutes of my time. So little to ask. Besides, I still had some time on the meter before I got a ticket. So while I'm not normally a praying man (at least not with strangers in the middle of the street) I agreed and we held hands and bowed our heads.
Once that was done, I could have easily wished him well and continued on my way, but I couldn't seem to move my feet. I was anchored there. Clearly, looking back, there was something still to be experienced.
He continued talking, sharing with me a little about his history and what he's been through. But not as an excuse, and it didn't feel like it was a "please feel sorry for me" manipulation type story. He was just sharing. I was taken aback, not by some of the horrifying and uncomfortable experiences he's had to endure, but by his complete willingness to share his life. He freely and openly revealed his crime and mistakes, and his regrets and wishes that he would have done to have his life turn out differently. He shared his sadness and pain and despair, the mental, physical, and emotional abuse he's endured day after day, and how he's contemplated suicide (several times) and keeps turning to his faith to pull hum through.
And all the while I just kept listening to him.
He asked me why do I think this is happening to him? Why, if he's already done his time and paid his debt with 20 years of his life, is he continue to be punished and suffer through what may be another 20. And yet he continues to act with positivity, telling kids when they pass by to stay in school and listen to their mothers, to couples walking past he'll call out for them to share their love with each other, whenever he can tell the inner city kids the he comes across to listen to their parents and stay straight.
I found myself hearing certain buzz words that kept triggering my set and trained "coaching" responses. And I before I knew it, I was replying.
However, it's one thing to tell a client who is struggling with bills or overworked and overwhelmed in their job that "suffering is optional". Telling a man who has lived through experiences that i can't begin to imagine is another. Who was I to say that "everything has a purpose"? Or to suggest that there is a "gift" in all of this. What business did I have to offer him a different perspective?
I replayed the conversations of struggle and suffering that I have with my clients all the time, and suddenly the stakes just got bigger.
And yet, as much as my brain kept telling me to shut up, that I had no idea what i was talking about and how dare I devalue his experience by lobbing these cliched new age phrases, I kept talking. The words just kept flowing from my mouth.
Even more startling, he listened. I was fully expecting him to cut me off at any point with something like "Man, you got a lot of nerve telling me that crap. You don't know what it's like. You're lucky, you've got a home, and a wife who loves you, and money, and you showered and ate today, and you get to go back to that every day. How dare you try to placate me."
But he didn't. He just listened.
And when he simply listened to me, allowing me to try to offer some sort of aid and comfort, I found myself wanting to do more. Without him even asking for anything, I found myself reaching into my pocket, my fingers sifting through the change... then separating the bills in my pocket, making sure I was grasping the single dollar bill... and then graduating to the five, which I took out and placed in his cup, telling him that I wanted to give him three things. That was the first.
And this is when it got interesting.
While he was appreciative, it was clear that even a five wasn't enough to help even for the rest of the day. He respectfully asked if I could offer any more. I replied that it was my last (not wanting to part with the single and change that remained).
"Couldn't you go to inside to the McDonald's and take some money out of the cash machine? Like $20? That would help me be able to get some food and a room and get out of the cold."
$20? Is he kidding? What nerve. My old mind began to race. He should be grateful for what he's gotten from me. Little does he know that he graduated from $.67 to a dollar to a whole five dollar bill.
But that thought path quickly faded. And I thought to myself, why not? Sure, I have all my own reasons and excuses. Money is tight, I'm way in debt, I'm waiting for checks to clear and checks to arrive and bills to pay and all that stuff. But really, in the grand scheme of things, what's $20.
Considering that Roland was offering me another option that I hadn't considered, something in me said, "Yes."
So I got up, walked to the machine and took our $40. Wandered to the general store and got a large bottle of clean water, stopped at the McDonald's and got a bag of burgers and fries and returned and placed it along the bench alongside him. And with it, I also included a $20.
As I offered it to him, I also told him the second thing that I wanted to give him, which was in response to his pain and past. Acknowledging how hard and hopeless he must be, and that I can't even begin to imagine what it's like... and yet, tapping into his faith and belief in God, suggesting that what if all that he's going through, all the pain and all the challenges, are so that he can speak more directly and clearly to those youth at risk. If I offer advice, they won't listen to this goofy white boy. But when he talks, perhaps they'll hear his message and heed his words. Maybe his purpose it to touch, connect, and save a young by from making the same mistakes. Who knows? And also offering the perspective that God is giving him this experience because he knows that Roland can take it. Even when he thinks he can't, when he's on the edge of despair, he can withstand more than he thinks. And I knew that was true, because he was there talking with me.
Perhaps you could say that with that initial prayer, God touched me. Perhaps He was sending words through me to Roland.
Maybe it was just my Value system and heart that got caught in just the right way and my Coaching self just couldn't resist.
It could be just a magical moment of timing.
I don't know. But what i do know is that what he needed more than money, at that moment, was someone to see him as a human. As the man he once was, that he could have been, and that he still is, despite how his outside world has been. And I do know that every moment, every action and impulse on my part felt right.
So I told him that I did need to get going, that I had appointments to keep, but that I wanted to give him the third thing. And for that, he had to stand.
I could see him slightly confused, curious, and very willing. And he stood.
And I hugged him. A good while.
I hope people took notice of this clean cut white man, hugging this dirty, worn, beaten, smelly, homeless black man, and perhaps it startled a few, maybe some didn't really care at all, and I hope that at least one person took notice and got curious themselves. Maybe they'll take that image through their day.
I know Roland did.
As I was getting ready to leave, he said, "God bless you, Ben."
I looked at him straight in the eye and said, "He already has."
Roland immediately wanted to teach me about possession and material goods and all that he thought I was referring to, but i stopped him. It wasn't about that.
"No, you don't understand. God has already blessed me, because I'm here talking with you. You have touched my life, and I know that I will carry this moment along with me. I thank you."
That happened a few weeks ago and I'm still processing and unpacking the event, exploring the impact that it has had on me, curious as to the impact that I might have on him, and excited about the possible impact that we might both have on those who witness this story.
So why am I sharing this with you?
I want to be clear that I'm not expecting email responses on the line of praise and appreciation for this amazing and generous act of humanity that I've done. Quite frankly, as stated above, I've already experienced my reward.
And since the purpose of these BITS is to discover lessons within that we can incorporate into our coaching. And with this one, I could pull out so many lessons for us to learn from.
- As much as I could have kept saying "no", he just kept offering me more options I hadn't considered. And while I was confident he would accept a clear "no" from me, he was committed to doing whatever he could to elicit a "yes".
- No matter how hard it is, how challenged we feel, there's always someone worse off.
- Who knows what is good and what is bad? If everything has a purpose and meaning, at least in our own heads, then there is a lot going on that we don't understand, and we're just looking at a shorter time frame.
- There are things more important than money.
- Money is short term solution to a long term problem. It never lasts as much as we hope, nor resolves all that we desire
- We are capable of enduring so much more than we think.
But I think above all of these, it's a beautiful example of how we just need to listen to each other. Deeply see each and everyone one of us as humans.
So if you made it this far, then I request you take yourself one step further. I have a hope that you will be inspired to step
out of whatever routine you may be in, take a moment to listen deeply to
what's really needed, and be willing to act. Of course it could be with your clients. But so, then really go
for it. Really let go of how you think you "see" them, and allow
yourself to explore what else might be there.
And where else can this be experienced? It doesn't have to be
with a homeless man. It could be anywhere you normally turn the other
way, turn a blind eye, filter out the noise, just keep the status quo.
This time, just once, step out of the comfort zone and stop, look, and listen.
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It's my commitment to contribute in as many ways as I can to help all coaches grow and discover their confidence and power in coaching. This email is one of them.
Please spread the word and pass this along to all the other coaches you know, so that together we can learn from each other and change the world.
By the way, feel free to drop me a line on my email below and let me know what's working (or not) about this newsletter. It's still in the early stages, so your input would be most helpful and appreciated.)
Sincerely, -ben dooley, CPCC, PCC.
"I coach coaches (like
you) to coaching success."
630-484-2336
ben@bedo.org
www.bedo.org/coaches
specializing in
Core Curriculum, Certification, Exam Prep, and Beyond. |
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