Action without vision…just passes the time.

Vision with action can change the world.”

It’s one of my favorite quotes.  Stop for a moment and replace the word “the” in the last line, to “your”.  It now reads, “Vision with action can change YOUR world.”

What does your ideal life look like? What would it feel like if you achieved all the goals that thus far have loomed out of reach?  Amazing, right?  The thing is, there’s a reason your ideal life feels more like fantasy than reality.  There’s a reason you’ve settled for it being a “nice idea” but not “real life”.  And I know what the reason is.  More importantly, I know how to help you do something about it.

Coaching at Thrive Consulting is all about thought work.  I can prove to you that your thoughts lead to action; whether that action is productive or counterproductive. It’s never the other way around.  I can teach you how to make your thoughts work for you. I can teach you how to change your life for good.

Contact me today if you’d like to learn more about what coaching really is, and for a free, no obligation “trial session”.  You’ll feel more inspired and empowered than ever.

xo

Amy

Imagine yourself one year from today.  I’m fairly certain we all have an idea of what we’d like life to look like one year from now.  And the truth is, we have a say in making that happen; but what we must realize is that the coming year is comprised of individual days- and those individual days constitute pages of the story we’ll tell a year down the road.  What story are your days writing?

Every time we make a decision to do what brings progress when we’d rather procrastinate, or do what is healthy rather that what feels more indulgent, or push ahead despite overwhelming fear, we are writing a story we’ll be happy to tell one year from now. We’re writing the story of how we achieved all we aspired to. We’re writing our story of success.

Conversely, we add pages to our life’s tale each time we cheat ourselves, too.  By giving in to discouragement, choosing the couch over the gym, or choosing to avoid a challenge rather than face it head on, we contribute paragraphs to the pages that will articulate the lives we live one year from now.

I know for sure that one year down the road, I want to bask in the glow of achievement, satisfaction, and progress. I want to feel proud of a job well done. I want to celebrate success and growth in all the areas of my life that I’m passionate about.  I know for sure that I’d rather tell the story of the payoff for my struggle and hard work rather than the story of how I came “close but not quite” or let my dreams fall by the wayside.  One year from now, I don’t want to still be where I am today.

My wish for you is that each day, you write the story that you’re proud to tell this time next year.

What is it that’s looming over your head tonight? That thing that you should do, need to do, thought about doing, want to do, or meant to do, but just haven’t started on?

There are countless hurdles every day that we THINK block us from pursuing the important next steps in our lives; the steps that will carry us, little by little, to where we dream of being. Something about starting that journey scares us sometimes. And it’s true that the first step is usually the hardest.

Be reminded that you and I are the sum of our small steps. When the grand task feels overwhelming, or even impossible, conquer procrastination and practice reframing the situation with this simple truth:

From one moment to the next, all I ever have to do is the NEXT thing. Not the whole thing; Just the NEXT thing.

You don’t have to complete that marketing presentation by tonight. (Even if you do.) All you have to do is the NEXT thing; So you can start by scribbling out a few bullet points. (The first step is the hardest.)

You don’t have to find a new job by next week or else. All you have to do is the NEXT thing, which means you can just log onto a job board and see what’s available. (It will suddenly seem like much less of a chore.)

You don’t have to go to the gym and complete your 60 minute workout after a long and taxing day at work when you’d rather go home and hit the couch. All you have to do right now is the NEXT thing; Which means you’re just getting your gym shoes on. Watch and see what happens when that step is complete, and all you then have to do is the NEXT thing again. I’m willing to bet that you’ll be a no-show to that date with your couch. (It’s ok. The conversation would have been very one-sided.)

Get my point? Your results will be the sum of your SMALL steps; so when the big picture feels too overwhelming, taxing, exhausting, or intimidating, try this mind-tweak- and make a promise with yourself that you’ll never have to work miracles. All you ever have to do is the NEXT thing- and watch the miracles take care of themselves.

When I Say Work, I Mean Work! A good life coach can make many minutes of your day harder–and your entire existence easier.

By Betsy Streisand
January 1, 2004
cnnmoney.com(Business 2.0) – When the phone rang, she answered it. When e-mail arrived, she opened it. Anytime a client needed Karen Duester’s attention, she gave it. For nearly 10 years, Duester spent her days in rapid-response mode and her nights and weekends doing the rest of her job–analyzing food and creating nutritional labels. Her business, Food Consulting Co., grew steadily, and over time she got just about everything she wanted. Except a life.

So in early 2002, Duester got herself a life coach. Now she has a life too, thanks to someone she’s never met face-to-face but calls regularly, talking for 45 minutes at a stretch. “I’m running my business,” says Duester, 43, “instead of it running me.”

Once reserved for stressed-out C-level executives at Fortune 500 companies, life coaches are increasingly joining financial advisers, personal trainers, and psychotherapists as part of everyday business-people’s private support staffs. The International Coach Federation in Washington, D.C., the industry’s main credentialing organization, claims that more than 20,000 coaches currently practice worldwide, with about three-quarters of them in the United States. The ICF’s membership is considerably smaller–6,000–but it has quadrupled since the beginning of the recession three years ago. In a precarious economy, apparently, more and more jobholders are willing to pay $500 to $1,000 a month for weekly sessions with someone who’s equal parts nag, business strategist, and career counselor. “A life coach goes straight to the who, the what, and the how,” says Sandy Vilas, CEO of Coach U, which has trained 10,000 coaches in 51 countries. “Who are you? What do you really want? How are you going to get it?”

Duester, for example, wanted to get her work done during normal business hours. But she couldn’t escape the entrepreneur’s trap of attempting to grow a business and service current customers at the same time. “I never concentrated long enough during the day to get anything finished,” she says.

Duester’s coach, Judy Feld, who also happens to be president of the ICF, challenged her client to eliminate the chief sources of distraction. “Judy asked me what would happen if I simply stopped picking up the phone and answering my e-mail during working hours,” Duester recalls. “I thought, that’s a great idea. Now how am I going to pull it off?”

At first, Duester could stomach the silence for only a day before falling back on old habits. After three months of experimentation and encouragement from Feld, however, she arrived at a system to manage communication–and clients–that has made her far more productive.

Now, when the phone rings, Duester doesn’t answer it. Her assistant retrieves her phone messages and e-mail and submits a list to Duester twice daily. Her clients know they will, without fail, get a response by the next business day.

Revenues are up 60 percent since Feld started providing advice, and Duester is considerably less harried. “Karen needed to filter what gets in,” says Feld, whose initial assessments of Duester revealed her to be a chronic overachiever. In the process of learning to set boundaries, Duester has also weeded out difficult clients who take more time than they’re worth.

The ideal coach is an expert listener and strategist who draws your goals out of you and then holds you to them. A worthy coach won’t help you cope with an Oedipus complex or improve your relationship with a teenage daughter. Nor is a coach a management consultant. “We are concerned with questions, not answers,” says Vijay Govindarajan, a professor of international business at Dartmouth’s Tuck School and an executive coach who’s worked with brass at IBM, Pitney Bowes, and Hewlett-Packard. “There are no white papers delivered at the end of the day.”

Some clients check in with their coaches daily, if only via a three-word e-mail or a brief phone message. Duester, who speaks to Feld three times a month, likes knowing that someone is regularly analyzing her work habits without constantly looking over her shoulder. “I needed a sounding board, and someone to remind me that this was my business,” she says. “I needed to be in control.”

In the wake of her new policies, Duester hasn’t lost a single account. Just as important, she’s also consistently out of the office by dinnertime, takes most weekends off, and enjoys quarterly vacations with her husband–without her laptop and cell phone. She’s even learned to respond to Feld’s advice without getting whiplash. “Now, instead of being shocked at my suggestions, she’s just as likely to be the one to say, hey, let’s take a look at that,” Feld says. “That’s a big shift.”

What’s on your wish list? Is it a thriving career? A special relationship? Maybe travel? Peace? Fitness? Joy? What are all the reasons you can’t achieve what you’re longing for?

Have you ever tried listing the reasons why you CAN? I’m willing to bet there are just as many. I’m not here to sell anyone the illusion that temporary hurdles don’t exist, but success comes in cans, not can’ts. I promise if you take even 60 seconds to write down the reasons you CAN achieve what you aspire for, your perspective will begin to change. (Now, imagine if you put that into practice daily.)

Interesting fact: Physiologically, our brains don’t distinguish between thoughts linked to actual circumstances and thoughts that are self generated.

You can literally program your mind with the empowering thoughts that will lead to empowering action!

Remember: Contemplate the CANS!

Are you following your bliss? What brings you joy? What is it that you absolutely love to do? What comes NATURALLY to you? The answers to these questions may point you to your natural, God-given gifts. “Skills” are very different from gifts. While “skills” can be learned, “gifts” are NATURAL and INHERENT.

Too often we find ourselves “going through the motions” of the lives we’ve fallen INTO rather than designing the lives we can fall IN LOVE WITH! This often happens because we dutifully deliver the world a healthy daily dose of whatever “skills” we’ve acquired during our time on earth, but when misaligned, they aren’t infused with the same organic passion that comes with capitalizing on our GIFTS!

Pause: Have the courage to dream for a few minutes about what life would look like if what you did for a living was in DIRECT alignment with your gifts.

Now consider: Can you make that happen? What if you could?

(Following MY bliss involved founding Thrive Consulting, my life coaching practice, where I partner with clients to transform their lives into the ones they’ve previously only imagined.)

xo-

Amy

“Your past is not your potential. In any hour you can choose to liberate the future.” -Marilyn Ferguson

I don’t know about you, but I love knowing that if today just totally STINKS so far, I CAN START MY DAY (or my LIFE!) OVER AT ANY TIME!!!

What do you need to start over today? Take a breath and do it.

The clean slate is yours for the taking!

I’m quite sure you didn’t wake up this morning thinking, “I think I’ll give myself the gift of a life coach today! I’m ready to take my life to the next level!” (Come on, who talks like that?)

What’s more likely is that you or someone you know woke up this morning thinking “Here we go again. Another 10 hours at work ahead of me. I forget what it’s like to love my job. I’m so bored!” Or, perhaps you rolled out of bed wishing you had the inspiration to start your fitness regimen that you’ve been putting off since you first resolved to start one 4 New Years Eves, 4 months, 27 days and 16 hours ago. (Procrastinate much?) Maybe when you woke up this morning you thought about your relationship, and how it just doesn’t feel quite the same way it “used to” and you wondered what you could do to get there again. Perhaps your mind raced down today’s list of 18 “to-do” items and you wished you had more time for your family. Maybe you just woke up feeling unfulfilled and wondering if it’s really possible to be one of those people who can hardly sleep because they’re so excited about waking up and starting another day in a life they love. (Are those people for real?!) Maybe your life is AMAZING, and you just want to continue growing!

It’s people like this, and many others, that work with a life coach. They are determined people who believe in seizing the moment and not wasting another day on a life that isn’t everything they desire it to be. Whether they want a new kind of success, more joy, better balance, fulfilling relationships, an extra dose of insight and inspiration, or all of the above, they find it through life coaching and begin to THRIVE like never before.
They begin to DO things they never thought possible!

If your life isn’t absolutely EVERYTHING you dream it to be, I personally invite you to contact me today for a FREE no-obligation discovery session to determine if life coaching is for you! Speaking from experience as a “coachee”, it’s the very best gift I’ve ever given myself.

I DARE YOU to trade the life you’ve fallen into for a life you’ll fall in love with!

xo-

Amy

Let it soak in… It’s real!

As my career progressed, I was ultimately fortunate to enjoy the experience of working as a Senior Executive Vice President, Human Resources at a remarkable company in the financial sector. I was making a living doing a lot of what I do now, in the sense that I spent much of my time coaching and “counseling” individuals on work/life issues, and working with them to reach the professional goals they aspired to. Even then, however, I often wished that I could spend ALL my working hours supporting and developing people as a trusted and compassionate confidante, and leave the administration and high-level management responsibilities on a shelf. I was ALMOST doing what I loved, but something still just wasn’t quite right. There were days I felt depleted…there were days I felt defeated… and despite my genuine love of my career and the company I worked for, I knew I was capable of something so much more…and more importantly, something more authentically ME. I was haunted by the question of whether, at the end of my days, the world would be better for my having been in it. At that point, it became critically important to me to find real meaning in my career. Knowing with absolute certainty that loving and encouraging people was what I did best, a career in life coaching was the clear destination for me.

Skipping forward to today, it’s truly a joy to reflect on the journey of self discovery that brought me to where I am today. The strategies that I’ve employed in my own life to not only overcome obstacles, hardship, and-let’s face it- heartache, and discover my true purpose in life, are strategies that have proven to be a real catalyst for change in the lives of others too. That I am able to spend my days coaching others with those tools brings me unspeakable joy. I take a vested, personal interest in the success and achievement experienced in each one of my clients’ lives, and it’s my honor to be a part of the process.

While based in Chicago, Illinois, Thrive Consulting works with clients all over the world! With few exceptions (upon request), life coaching sessions typically occur by phone in the privacy and comfort of your own home, or even during your lunch hour! For more information and a free consultation on what coaching can mean to YOUR life, please contact us today at amy@thrivelifeconsulting.com or call toll free: 1(877)537-3694.