Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO, Google - Best Advice I ever got - Hire a Coach.

In this video on CNN/Fortune Schmidt talks about why everyone that wants to do well needs to hire a coach

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Coaching doesn’t make sick people well…it helps healthy people become extra-ordinary.

Thomas J. Leonard.

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"Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself."
Henry Miller

“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it” -Henry David Thoreau

Don't try to drink the whole river...

I spend one day a week guiding kayak trips in perhaps the most beautiful place on earth, so when Oprah's Life Coach Martha Beck started talking about things "bonking her kayak" I took notice - here is a bit of what she had to say...

I've noticed that people who are still in train-track mode try to handle every demand or request that reaches them. That's like trying to drink the Nile. You just can't do everything. You shouldn't try. When your to-do list threatens to spill over, examine every item on it while asking two questions:

1. Is this task absolutely necessary to keep my life afloat?

2. Does this task buoy me up emotionally?

If the answer to either of these questions is yes, do the deed. If not, do nothing. Let that problem or opportunity float past you. Wave and smile, if you like, but don't bring inessential, unpleasant things on board. Your kayak isn't big enough. Anything unnecessary could sink you.

Right now my various mailboxes—voice, paper, and electronic—contain about 120 messages waiting to be answered. Today, about 15 of those messages—ten from work, five from loved ones—are essential to keep my professional and personal life from sinking. A couple more are from funny friends; they'll make me laugh. I'll get to those 17 messages today. The others, later. Maybe. I've found that important messages tend to bob along beside me, bonking against my kayak, until I get to them.

Each day, ask those two river-runner's questions about every request or assignment you encounter. Do the things that are absolutely necessary or make you happy. Let everything else drift away. If you overlook something important, you can always paddle over to it later, or snag something similar floating by. That's one of the joys of the crazy, fluid world we've created.

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Sleep boosts learning...http://ping.fm/A6n89

Son's autism leads to innovation http://ping.fm/F6Blb

"Life-coaches all the rage"
USA TODAY http://ping.fm/oAsY6

this is great!.. and 7 other friends like You.http://ping.fm/L9ddg

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Poll: Life Coaching - http://ping.fm/I7Arc

I cured with the power that came through me.
Black Elk

Keep taking those shots

A repost, worthy of repeating, that seems to fit my day...

I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost more than 300 games. Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life... and that is why I succeed. Michael Jordan

"I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his
dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a
success unexpected in common hours."

Henry David Thoreau

Talking Heads and Filling the Big Suit...

I was watching David Byrne dance around in his huge suit in one of my favorite movies - Stop Making Sense and it got me thinking (!) about how so many of us are walking around with out filling our 'suit'. Let me explain... we all have incredible abilities, amazing talents and skills, yet so many of us live with a self-image that is a wisp of what we truly are, resulting in living a life that is a speck of what it could be.

Imagine yourself for a moment in a big suit, a really big suit... inches of space between your shoulders and the fabric, between your chest and the fabric, between your neck and the fabric... the suit floats around you, as the top of your relatively small head peeks out of the top. Now allow yourself to expand to your true self... filling out the suit until the seems bulge.

As you grow through the process of working with your life coach, you may find yourself naturally walking around in this large suit, the seems bulging with your talents, skills and accomplishments.

Age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
Longfellow

I have known many troubles, but most of them never happened.

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.
-James Joyce

Founder of Bob's Red Mill Natural Foods transfers business to employees

CLACKAMAS COUNTY NEWS
Scores of employees gathered to help Bob Moore celebrate his 81st birthday this week at the company that bears his name, Bob's Red Mill Natural Foods.

Moore, whose mutual loves of healthy eating and old-world technologies spawned an internationally distributed line of products, responded with a gift of his own -- the whole company. The Employee Stock Ownership Plan Moore unveiled means that his 209 employees now own the place and its 400 offerings of stone-ground flours, cereals and bread mixes.

"This is Bob taking care of us," said Lori Sobelson, who helps run the business' retail operation. "He expects a lot out of us, but really gives us the world in return." Moore declined to say how much he thinks the company is worth. In 2004, however, one business publication estimated that year's revenues at more than $24 million. A company news release issued this week stated that Bob's Red Mill has chalked up an annual growth rate of between 20 percent to 30 percent every year since.

"Potential," I said, "doesn't mean a thing. You've got to do it. Almost every baby in a crib has more potential than I have."
Bukowski

Dean of Coaching is hiring! If you know someone who would make an excellent office guru administrative assistant - send them our way;
http://ping.fm/oCHbg

Life-coaches all the rage - USA TODAY

This is a couple of years old - but here are some highlights if you missed it -

By Karen S. Peterson, USA TODAY

Personal growth is hot. Diagnosis is not. That is one reason America has seen a boom in the number of people offering their services as "life coaches." These guides give clients the confidence to get unstuck — to change careers, repair relationships, or simply get their act together. They also raise some eyebrows because they work in a field that is virtually unregulated.

"We are not talking about being incompetent or weak. They are everyday, normal people who have their lives together. They realize the value of having somebody to help them think outside the box." — life coach Laura Berman Fortgang.

Life coaches are a new option for the worried well — those whose lives are only slightly askew. No longer do they need a diagnosis from a psychotherapist who delves into the painful past. Using the telephone or Internet, they can sign up with an upbeat life coach who becomes a partner in defining a better future.

Coaching is especially popular with men, who respond favorably to a term from sports, says coach Patrick Williams, whose Institute for Life Coach Training is based in Ft. Collins, Colo. "Seventy% of the caseload in therapy are women; 60% in coaching are men," he says.

"It is OK for a man to see a coach," says Martha Beck, a popular life coach who guests on The Oprah Winfrey Show and writes a column for O — The Oprah Magazine. "It is not OK for a man to see a therapist."

The latest trend is life coaching for teens, Williams says. He encourages therapists to take his training program and switch careers to life coaching. "We are training people to do family coaching, parent coaching, retirement coaching. There are a lot of specialty niches."

Some 10,000 coaches of various types are working in the USA alone, according to a review in the current Psychotherapy Networker, a magazine for professionals. Many have signed on in the last five years to what has become a flourishing — and unsupervised — industry that excites some trend watchers but deeply troubles others.

Coaching began as a motivational tool for the corporate world. "It has been OK to have an executive coach for some time," says the Psychotherapy Networker's Jim Naughton.

The business concept was based on organizational research "with intellectual heft," he says. The practice has proliferated to become the equivalent of having a personal trainer, he says.

Life coaching is "action-oriented, solution-oriented, concentrates on forward motion," not looking at the past, says Laura Berman Fortgang, a life coach based in Montclair, N.J. and author of Living Your Best Life.

Ralph knows best

Insist on yourself. Never imitate.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

You could work with me, or you could try "The Country’s Best Life Coach"

He has a beard... he's been to seminars... Marc knows he is "The Country’s Best Life Coach" - even if no one else does...

I was certified as a life coach in 2000 at the acclaimed Syracuse Ramada Inn and ever since I’ve been coaching celebrities and powerful figures such as Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, and even Tony Robbins!

I was voted 6th Best Life Coach of the Year by Readers Digest and I am proven to change lives by Life Changes magazine. I’m highly qualified and I’m always met with enthusiasm; I’ve personally been growing for years; I have a beard; I’ve been to seminars; and I’ve studied NLP, SCP, LSP processes amongst other things, making me one of The Country’s Best Life Coaches (aka TCBLC).

Do it now! Give yourself permission to succeed!

I am available for bar mitzvahs, bat mitzvahs, weddings, bachelorette parties, birthdays, and more!

I helped Tony write his new seminar, Life is Totally Worth Living!

Note: My books and tapes will be available next year about this time. I have already sold over 7 copies, so get yours today!

[tags]Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, marc horowitz, tony robbins, center for improved living success life coaching bar mitzvahs, bat mitzvahs, weddings, bachelorette [/tags]

Not sure I can compete with Marc.

Why my son will have a Life Coach - part two

In yesterday's lead in I mentioned my pursuit of a Life Coaching degree or certification over the past year or so... a few weeks ago I came across an ad in the local paper for a course to be taught here in Hawaii by a mainland school that had rave reviews. The reviews for this school seemed too good to be true, really. All of their graduates, and clients of their graduates, seemed to be having life-changing experiences, and raved about being more prepared to start a practice after the course than they could have imagined. And the complete course took less than a week. Less than a week?! How is that possible?

I reflected on when I was Dean of Students at an alternative high school, and I took a group of students to a film school. This school not only taught them how to make movies, they made a movie, a complete movie - in less than a week. At the time no one thought this was possible, now several film schools do it.

I was still a little less than sure, and stayed that way until after the course began. Soon it became clear what a well-crafted course this was - and how every moment was dedicated to developing and practicing the precise skills we needed. And truly everyone in the class had life-changing experiences. We were an interesting group, attorneys, former therapists, authors, business owners, teachers, and we were each other's life coach through the process, and we found out just how powerful having a life coach can be.

The point to all this is - if my son want to go to college - fantastic, if he doesn't and has another way he wants to go - fantastic, either way he will reap the benefit of my experience - that having a great life coach can be more important than college, so I will hire one for him, likely one of the great coaches I went to school with.

I suggest you, and one day your children, recruit one too.

Why my son will have a Life Coach - part one

After over ten years of very expensive education, I decided to go back for more. I love where I live (Hawaii), and I loved being a teacher, but I didn't like being a teacher in Hawaii. Without going into too many boring details, Hawaii treats their teachers like smelly compost, and I don't loathe myself enough to put up with that. I thought about returning to academic life, I had been offered a position at a University here, but for various reasons, it was a less than ideal option. A therapist friend had recommended that I look into life coaching. I enjoyed being, and felt that I was successful as a counselor, and I often was a kind of de facto life coach for my friends and colleagues, I was often called "Doctor Dean" - I won't mention what else I was called here.

I spent a year researching life coaching programs - every thing from instant PhD's from diploma mills to two year programs. I also read several books on life coaching (including the text from the two year program). None of the programs in Hawaii appealed to me. Graduates from the more involved programs didn't seem overly enthusiastic about what they had learned. I hired a graduate from one of the programs as a life coach for a few sessions - I was less than impressed. I began to wonder if this was really something I wanted to pursue...

"Tune in for the exciting conclusion tomorrow - same Bat Time, same Bat Channel"

Kevin Smith needs a Life Coach

"Kevin Smith was delayed getting from Oakland to Burbank Saturday night because he was "too wide for the sky." According to the 'Clerks' and 'Jay & Silent Bob' director's Twitter, Southwest Airlines removed him from a flight after deeming him a safety risk.

"Dear @SouthwestAir - I know I'm fat, but was Captain Leysath really justified in throwing me off a flight for which I was already seated?" Smith tweeted.

"I'm way fat... But I'm not THERE just yet," he continued. "But if I am, why wait til my bag is up, and I'm seated WITH ARM RESTS DOWN. In front of a packed plane with a bunch of folks who'd already I.d.ed me as 'Silent Bob."

- Huff Post

Kevin Smith needs a life coach, or a personal trainer, or both. He's brilliant and should be living a brilliant life, not waddling around like a sea lion stuck on a rock.