Finishing off this year and planning your New Year with the "Three Step Process"!

Coaching is all about you forward planning, setting goals and living into your future! By doing this, you create a competitive edge, Clarity of thinking and can anticipate challenges that may crop up

The objective of "The Three Steps" process is that you have a worksheet where you systematically finish off this year and you start your planning process for next year. Not only that, you will have a plan in place of how you are going to start your year off powerfully.

It’s an hour and a half phone session with Mike where you:

• Review and complete your ups and downs of this year


• “Bank” your learning's from this year


• Create your 2009 in the areas of: your overall theme, your plan for maintaining high energy, developing your capabilities and being remarkable.


• You will also identify your key business & personal relationships and who you are going to give back to & support


• You will also develop a plan for hitting the ground running when you return to work in 2009.
  

You will receive a template of the process where you can systematically update and improve your plan – a fantastic resource to add depth and value to your planning!

If you haven’t experienced this process before, it’s a "clearing the table" experience that enables you to lay the foundations of your planning for your 2009.

It's also comprehensive enough to make sure you cover your personal and family side of life as well! All work without play is not a good recipe for success!

Give yourself a head start in what looks like a challenging year ahead!

Testimonials:
“….the three step process was a key element of my successful 2008!”
“I completed my 2007 and created my 2008 – I would have never done this on my own!”
“I clarified what I’d achieved last year and got to plan systematically for my next year!”

Email Mike... to secure yourself this experience.

When you think you just can't take any more!

Another report from the long distance mourning event.

One two and now three.

Three funerals, each one a separate experience, one a 90 year old passing through peacefully, another a 20 year old cut short in their life and yet another a 70 something woman letting go peacefully and with full acceptance after suffering a painful disease.

So many times I reached the place in myself where I felt like I couldn't take any more sadness - and then came the tears.....and then came a new feeling and the old feeling was left behind.

And when I saw the pain of a parent mourning the death of their child - I would think - "how unbearable must that feeling be!" I would see them in the next minute talking animatedly with a long time no see relative and then hear their belly laughter....

Which reminds me of the births that I have witnessed. How a woman can have these amazing painful contractions...and once over, it's like they have instantly forgotten them, that they are behind them and they don't carry them on.

Amazing to see this painful sorrow processed in a cultural context. Amazing to see how once you shed your first tears and feel your unbearable feelings.....the belly laughter rises up and you share the love. As soon as another person starts to express their unbearable pain....it's amazing how quickly you shift your attention from yourself to supporting them.

So if you reach the place where you think you just can't take any more - take heart - breaking down into tears opens a door, previously shut to you, where once you walk through it, your overwhelm dissapears and you can think clearly again.

How much like the coaching process is this. So many times I see people in overwhelm who, in the coaching process, just walk through a door that they never knew was there. Once through the door, they have clarity, the ability to think through things and power they never knew they had.

Thank God for these natural processes!

Email Mike...

Giving Yourself Time for your Processes.

How little space and time do we give ourselves for our human processes.

It is by experiencing a traditional culture's process, that I see how mainstream society is indeed out of step with the human heart beat.

In the workplace you are expected to return to work, as soon as possible after a day off to attend the funeral. On your return, you are expected to be productive and alert. How little respect do we give ourselves by having this expectation?

Our Technological, Beaurocratic and Materialistic society is based on mechanical and theoretical foundations rather than respect for flesh and blood humanitarian foundations.

More than ever before, our society has tight control of the media and the education system. Winston Churchill said something like: "He who knows not history is doomed to repeat the mistakes of those gone before." What interest in history has a generation used to instant gratification given by the internet, mp3, and all technology in general?

You have no choices if you blindly accept the status quo's values and perceptions of what it is to be a human being.

You certainly can afford choices if you have independant means, a successful business, lots of holidays owed to you or a fantastic insurance policy in place.

The point is, you are either going to choose to honour your processes or you are choosing not to.

If you choose to honour your process, then you walk the "Short Suffering" path.

If you choose to honour society's process of you toughening up and holding it in, then you will walk the path of "Long Suffering", perhaps to your own grave.

It's not an easy choice for you to make.

But knowing what the choices are is vital to you having a choice in the first place.

Email Mike...

Taking time out to mourn.

It's been a long week of mourning.

The structure is that you walk in to be with the body of the departed, your emotion wells up and spills right out there, you are reduced to elemental and primal sobs, you can see clearly what your feelings and issues toward that person is and you just surrender to it all.

Then you find yourself sitting down with others who have all gone through something similar, a conversation starts up, someone says something funny and you find yourself rollicking with laughter.

Then you all hear the approaching wails of a new group of mourners, everyone pulls themselves into a respectful silence ready to support the next person's journey into the elemental and primal feeling states.

You sit there and see it happen, a person connecting with their grief, you instantly feel your own grief well up and you are crying there once again, but this time you don't feel alone, you are there supporting someone else, crying with someone.....and that feels quite different.

They come and sit with you and before long someone says something and everyone is laughing again.

This is how sharing time with a loved one who has passed looks like to me.

This is how one Maori family has done it, and it feels amazing to let it all hang out.

Now that it's over, I am feeling drained, listless and like I need a big rest.

Just put me in my pyjamas and let me cuddle up in bed!

Email Mike...

Seizing the Moment.

There's been another death in our community.

This time it's been a 20 year old boy called Tom.

He's our next door neighbour and he was killed in a car accident.

That was four days ago and we have been in the centre of all the family and friends gathering to mourn.

It's an enormous tragedy, but also an enormous joy to see how many friends and relatives have come from all over to honour his passing.

It's been a period of reflection for me around being alive, seizing the opportunity of life and being in hot pursuit of meaningful and inspiring goals.

I mean - what else is there to do with life?

Nothing else comes close.
Email Mike...

The Bound Man

The bound man is a story by Ilse Aichinger about a travelling man who was set upon by thieves and robbed, tied up and left to die in the wilderness.

The man somehow learnt to survive in the wilderness by working within the limitations of his ropes. He then reaches the edge of a town and finds a circus, and becomes employed as an act, called the "Bound man"

It's an amazing story, about how we can transcend our "ropes" or limitations. It's also revealing to see what our lives would be like without our "limitations"

Could it be that our limitations challenge us to be greater, wiser and stronger?

Here's a link to the full story - well worth a look!

http://simplethings.tribe.net/thread/455b8ed3-aa46-43c2-9fa2-8faa08e686f5

Don't give up!

Discouraged. Dissillusioned. Overwhelmed. Intimidated. Broken. Depressed. Beaten.

It's always a great time and place to make the decision to get back up again.

The darkest moment is usually where you find your strength. Back against the wall, you find the power within...

It's always the right time to make a stand.. when you find yourself down.

I found this song during one of those times - It came out of the blue and spoke to me! It helped me stand up again. It was the song that captured the moment for me and gave me the strength to stay true to my dream.

I've never found myself that low ever since, but am moved every time I hear it - the Bass riff at the end is a classic!

Thanks to Peter Gabriel for sharing his heart and his human-ness.