Thanksgiving Thoughts

Everyone's going to be hiring a coach in January, when it's time for New Year's Resolutions. I can get you trained, certified and ready to go by January 1. email me at sdunn@susandunn.cc. My training program is long distance, by phone, Internet courses and email.

THANKSGIVING THOUGHTS

Thou hast given so much to me,
Give one thing more, - a grateful heart;
Not thankful when it pleaseth me,
As if Thy blessings had spare days,
But such a heart whose pulse may be Thy praise.
~George Herbert

The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts. No Americans have been more impoverished than these who, nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving. ~H.U. Westermayer


If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, "thank you," that would suffice. ~Meister Eckhart

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. ~John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Thanksgiving Day comes, by statute, once a year; to the honest man it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow. ~Edward Sandford Martin


Thanksgiving, after all, is a word of action. ~W.J. Cameron

Millionaire finds happiness at work

WHAT IS THE ONE THING MONEY CAN'T BUY --
EVEN $1,000,000?

Mary works at a boutique convenience store that sells Lottery tickets. There are many conversations about what the person would do if they won.


I think it's a happy person who says, "I'd keep doing that I'm doing only ... travel A BIT/help others/buy my parents a home/send my kid to the best college, etc.


At least 3 coaches I have trained and certified, who are at what some might consider "retirement" age, tell me they will keep doing it "forever." (If you want to become a coach, email me for information on my unique coach certification program.- sdunn@susandunn.cc .)


And now for today's story. You may have heard this story from London. You can read more about it here.

THE MILLIONAIRE

Luke Pittard won £1.3million in the National (UK) Lottery over a year ago and he did what many of us would do - he bought a new house; he had a fancy wedding; he holidayed in the Canary Islands.


And then he decided he missed his friends at work, and he went back to work. At McDonald's!

His comment: "They all think I'm a bit mad but I tell them there's more to life than money," he said. "I loved working at McDonald's before I became a millionaire and I'm really enjoying being back there again."


He added: "To be honest, there's only so much relaxing you can do. "I'm only young and a bit of hard work never did anyone any harm."

So, happiness is ...

Well, friends have a lot to do with it. And love. And work you enjoy. And perhaps the kind of attitude Luke has. He seems to have everything in perspective. He missed his friends, and so he went back to find them.

Do you have things in perspective? The EQ COURSE can help a lot. Most people call it "the missing piece."

How to become an excellent Life Coach

HERE ARE THE TOP TEN WAYS TO BECOME AN EXCELLENT COACH - a dream position where you are your own boss, help people can't get fired, and is totally portable.

1. Get trained and certified with an individualized program.

As the director of a coach certification program, I know that the individuals who are drawn to coaching are very different and have unique backgrounds. With an individualized program, you do not have to waste your time going over the things you already know, or may even be degreed or credentialed in.

2. Get coaching yourself.

The coach you hire will be your 'model' for how coaching is done. You have a chance to experience the process in real life!

3. Know the difference between a therapist, a coach and a friend.

Friends are well-meaning, but often lack objectivity. Therapists can spend time sorting out things from the past and have constraints because of licensing regulations that do not apply to coaching. In coaching, we go forward. Whatever the person's past, we present them with the opportunity, encouragement and the TOOLS to go forward and re-create their life.

4. Make sure your coaching certification program includes marketing, by an individual who has spent time marketing.

To be an excellent coach, you have to have clients. You are an entrepreneur.

5. Learn to listen more than talk.

This is counter-intuitive, and a mistake many enthusiastic beginners make. You will learn more about the client and their situation by listening, and with guided listening- asking the right, and the hard, questions - you will be able to guide them in the direction that will win for them.

6. Don't think you have to be an expert at something.

What you are an expert in, is coaching. There are many principals and tools that apply to a vast range of situations, whether the person is male or female; a doctor or a longshoreman; a parent or non-parent; a 26 year old or a 65 year old. A good coaching program gives you the META view, the overview, that teaches you to see the commonality.

7. Never think you know it all.

In fact, the fun of coaching is that you will learn from every client.

8. Keep learning on your own.

Just because you have the certification, don't quit learning! I can say with some certainty that anything you learn will make you a better coach. It's a field for people who love to learn.

9. Remember that coaching is a service profession.

Your job is to make your client's life easier, not harder. Be flexible in your schedules, payments, length of calls, etc. For instance, I make my services available nights and weekends -- because that's when working people have time to contact their coach.

10. Join and participate in collegial organizations and activities.

I had the opportunity to serve on Thomas Leonard's R&D team and it was an invaluable experience. I am also a founding member of Coachville. Staying in touch with your leader and colleagues keeps you in front at the trough, so to speak.

---

By Susan Dunn, M.A. Clinical Psychology, Director of coach training and certification program, who can be reached at sdunn@susandunn.cc, or visited on the web. Susan Dunn offers a flexible, fast, effective and dynamic individualized coach-training and certification program. It can be delivered long distance (I have trained coaches all over the world), or in-person in your town or mine (Dallas/Fort Worth area). My office 20 mins. from DFW. I regularly provide private weekend training for coaches who want to complete the program in a hurry. This program is designed to equip you to be a coach in many different areas. Business, relationships, dating, emotional intelligence, success, wellness, leadership ... Just ask!

With years spent in marketing prior to coaching, marketing and building your practice is an integral part of the program. You don't want to just be a coach, you want to be a successful coach who has clients. eMail me @ sdunn@susandunn.cc .

What Happens When You Give Up Wanting Something?

Want to be a coach, the ideal profession? I train and certify coaches worldwide in an all long-distance program, by Phone and email, with support material on the Internet. THE IDEAL PROFESSION can be yours. Email me at sdunn@susandunn.cc for information. Completely individualized to meet your personal goals and Aspirations.

ARE YOU DISCOURAGED BECAUSE YOU'RE NOT GETTING SOMETHING YOU WANT?

From today's mailbag:

Hi Susan,

I read your blog post.

Giving up what you want is sometimes really hard. I fought it for a long time, because my kids were all wrapped up in it too and it doesn't matter that they're all grown up. As a mom, you never stop wanting things to be good for your kids!

I am an American living in Canada, married to a Canadian man. We met and got married in Nova Scotia, I had been living in Washington State. After living in NS for 2 years, I decided I wanted to be closer to my 2 grown sons and the grandchildren I had never met! So I started planning a move. I thought I had it so together. I decided in 2006 that I wanted to be in British Columbia by fall. I figured out how much money my husband and I would have to save to move, figured it out as to how much he would have to be earning and so forth. I researched all the moving options, moving vans, driving ourselves across country, planes, trains, how to get our cats there, searching for a house rental online, and so on.

As the summer progressed, my husband's work situation fell apart. The construction industry in NS, like so much else there, was seasonal and unreliable. Not only were we not saving money, but we were getting behind in paying our bills. Then my younger son announced he was getting married in September and wanted me to be there. This pushed my own deadline ahead at least a month. I stressed and stretched every dollar, worried my brain to death trying to figure it out, then decided to just give up on the timing of it all. If I didn't try to make it happen by September, or by any time, at least I wouldn't be so stressed.

The Universe knew my intentions, my desires, and that would just have to be enough.

This is remarkable, I'm still awed at how this worked...but that same day my husband came home, and before I said anything to him, told me that his work partner wanted to move to B.C. with us. All of a sudden the possibilities opened back up, we could split all the expenses, including renting a house, plus we would arrive with a business partner, always helpful.From there, it all fell into place. My older son said I could come stay with him and his family and go to the wedding with them, then stay with them until I found a house of my own. Then his (Canadian) wife got her mother looking for a house for us in BC, which she ended up finding and sharing with me. The landlord turned out to be a former client of hers, who waived all deposits because he knew her so well (she was his accountant; can't get any more reliable than that!). Meanwhile, my husband and his partner made it as far as Calgary, Alberta and went to work there, and eventually this is where I ended up too. It's a quick 1 1/2 hour plane flight to see my sons, and we're both making a ton of money here, it's like a gold rush, so I can visit them as often as I like.

We went from poverty and loneliness 5000 miles from my family, to moving closer, getting out of debt, and making good money, within a year, once I just "gave it up".-- Kathryn Beach Calgary, Alberta

Thanks, Kathryn, for sharing this with us.

For coaching call 817-734-1471. One-time sessions, by phone or email, or extended contract Just ask.

To Know How to Grow Old

TO KNOW HOW TO GROW OLD ...

"To know how to grow old,” wrote Henry Frederic Amiel , “is the master work of wisdom, one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living."

One of the most important things you can do to assist in this process, is to work on your emotional intelligence. It includes competencies such as flexibility and resilience.

Want to see how it works?

I have a client who is sure if he retires, he will die. He’s a physician and has been working those long hours since he was in his 20s. His father worked as a physician practically until the day he died, so this man has no role models. You know other people never count, it’s the ones close to you – if your solipsistic, and anyone who thinks they will die if they retire has that sort of narrow-minded, rigid thinking.

I have a female client who is having trouble with the changes in her appearance. While the doctor’s sense of self resides in his profession, this woman’s sense of self and self-esteem resided in her beauty. She is convinced she is no longer beautiful.

Both of these clients are lacking in the emotional intelligence skills that can ease any transition – for this is just another of the transitions in life.

After all, they’re saying that “60” is the new “40” and so forth. We are all living longer, and living in better health, so doesn’t it make sense to prepare for all stages?

You are going to “grow old,” everyone does, unless you don’t get to – and who ever thought of learning how to do it? Well what we want to learn how to do, is how to do it WELL.

One of the keys is a competency we call Resilience. It means being able to bounce back from rejections, losses, setbacks, and adversity, while remaining bouyant and optimistic about the future.

Adversity can hit at any age. Divorce is a hard thing to go through, and people go through it at many different ages. Youth are known to be more “resilient,” and to move through it faster. If you want an example, go to a singles groups for 20 years old, and then a singles group for 60 years old. Most of the people involved in both groups have been divorced, but oh what a different in attitude and outlook. Group #1 is already looking to the future, and eager to meet someone new. Group #2 is spending a lot of time talking about the past.

The mind, you see can get into ruts and run in circles all too easily if we allow it to. When you study emotional intelligence (at least if you take a good course that goes beyond the surface fluff which is usually about how your thinking brain shuts down when you get angry), you will learn a lot about the brain. We form neural connections when we learn things, and while we stop at some point to make new brain cells, it is available to us for – well, maybe forever – to make new connections. And how do you do this? By learning new things.

The more radically new, the better. That means if you’re an engineer, going on a getting your Ph.D. is nice, but it would benefit the resilience of your brain to learn opera or water skiing. If you’re a musician, it would be super to learn a new instrument, but would be far more beneficial, in this respect, to learn how to grow roses, or take up physics.

What should you learn? Something that scares the heck out of you. Something you know nothing about. Something where, when you sit down, you feel LOST. (How long has it been since you felt that way.) You’ll almost feel the wheels grinding as you grope around. I describe it as there’s no skeleton to hang the stuff off of.

I’ve worked with a number of EQ clients who have started into something radically new and they report great results. “My memory’s coming back,” one of them told me. “I thought it was gone.”

Another client, whose professions is ponderous and full of responsibilities, where he is the expert and the one everyone turns to, says it is “fun” to sit in the back of the room and know nothing, and to have to keep raising his hand. I must add that at first he did not, it took come coaching. At first he resented knowing nothing, and being “ignorant.” I encouraged him to continue, “just to see,” and pretty soon the results took over and became his own motivation. He opened up in many other new areas. He is now willing to travel, which he did not want to do before.

You can get in a box, especially if you’ve worked in the same career field your entire life. It seems foreign, or simply impossible, to take up something new. It doesn’t even seem interesting.

And that’s another way to become resilient as you age. You know how they saw if you find people boring, it’s because you are boring, or bored, and what you need to do is GET interested. Being bored by people, by life or by occupation is a habit of thinking after all, and the way you GET out of it is the same way you GOT into it. By going through the motions.

Instead of shutting down when you meet someone who bores you, that you think you know all about, or you disagree with them politically, or they come from another place in life, stop and enforce upon yourself the concept of “curious.” Force yourself – yes, force yourself, that’s how it begins – to say, “Really? And why do you think ____ is a bad candidate?”

Almost beside yourself, you will learn interesting things, and regain some joy that’s been lost in your life.

If you walk past a rose garden every day and either don’t see it, or think the person is ignorant to be growing roses, change your attitude BY FORCE and approach it differently.

Of course it’s up to you. Certainly nobody is going to MAKE you do this if you don’t want to, but I throw it out as a challenge. After all, someone famous said that when things become old (and the world can become old, yes, if you are rigid and brittle), then what you need is NEW EYES, and that’s part of what EQ is all about.

Knowing how to grow old is demanding, but not any moreso than learning how to be an adult, for heaven’s sake, and take your first job. You went after that, didn’t you? Well, here we go again. An emotional intelligence course can really open your eyes. Why not give it a try? You might like it so much you might want to go on an become a coach yourself. It’s a great profession for someone with some wisdom!

©Susan Dunn, EQ and professional life coach, www.susandunn.cc . Career, relationships, retirement and other transitions. Individual coaching is available by phone or email, no contract required. Pay as you go.

BECOME A COACH. Susan trains and certifies coaches worldwide in a program that’s all long-distance, fast, affordable and effective. She is a founding member of CoachVille and has a master’s in clinical psychology. For free ezine mailto:sdunn@susandunn.cc and write “ezine” for subject line. And be sure and check out her ebook, “Speak on a Cruise and Travel the World for Pennies.” Email for info.