Coaching Businesses and Life, a view from Long Beach

Taking Time For Number One

One of the prerequisite of fulfilling yourself and being more present with yourself is... spending time with yourself.  Sounds simple but how many times do you do?  If you don't, why not?

Imagine what is really happening ff you can't take ten minutes for yourself.  Do you have control of your life?  If you can't take 10 minutes to being with yourself, thinking, reflecting, how much control do you have over moving your life where you want it?  Reclaiming control over your life doesn't have to be strenuous or difficult.  It starts bits at a time.

You remember the enlightening question we asked a while back, of how to eat an elephant?  One piece at a time.  If you realize something has to change, you can do something as simple as taking 10 minutes to yourself by being alone.  That will help regain some control over your life and make you realize, ultimately you can chose.  If you can't do tat, ask yourself what is your level of discomfort on a scale of 1 to 10?  And talk to me.

Do it now or later

As I sit in front of my computer, I have a choice.  Work now or do it later, even tomorrow.

In a rare turn of event in southern California, it is gray outside and the need to drink tea and watch a warm movie sounds alluring.  Of course, there is also a need to work and do my writing.

I subscribe to the Kabbalah Center newsletter because their timely insightful hints always jolt me.  Today's point was proverb that goes something like: laziness pays off today, work pays off tomorrow!

How true.

Celebrating My Accreditation With The International Coaching Federation!

I would like to announce that I have received my ACC from the International Coaching Federation, ICF at last.

This is good news as I have been studying for about two years.

Unfortunately, the ICF now wants to scrap all three levels and make a single one for all.  We believe it is not worth it and simply not fair to those who have worked years on the MCC, PCC and our ACC.

What do you think?

For more info, check out: ICF, or the site that takes a stand against it here.

Balancing productive life with enjoying oneself

If there is one thing I am blessed with, it is the innate capacity to balance a productive life with enough on the side entertainment.

While I spend most of my time coaching and taking classes at CoachU, I also spend another good chunk of my tie writing about electric cars.  It has also afforded me the privilege of test driving some amazing cars, such as AC Propulsion's all electric eBox, Alfa Romeo amazing and unique 8C Competizione and a few others you can see from our blog, Electricnick and my articles on the Examiner.

You need to balance yourself between living a sustainable and productive life and having enough enjoyment to do a good job.

Balancing productive life with enjoying oneself

If there is one thing I am blessed with, it is the innate capacity to balance a productive life with enough on the side entertainment.

While I spend most of my time coaching and taking classes at CoachU, I also spend another good chunk of my tie writing about electric cars.  It has also afforded me the privilege of test driving some amazing cars, such as AC Propulsion's all electric eBox, Alfa Romeo amazing and unique 8C Competizione and a few others you can see from our blog, Electricnick and my articles on the Examiner.

You need to balance yourself between living a sustainable and productive life and having enough enjoyment to do a good job.

How To Get Back On The Saddle

OK, and speaking on getting back on the saddle, how do you get back doing what you normally do but have broken the routine?

It's a question that comes up often in coaching and getting back to it means you will need to focus on the future while keeping your mind aware of the present.  Sounds esoteric?  Not necessarily.

Let's image something as trivial as emptying the garbage every night.  You might have done it for a few months, friends come and stay over and you find yourself doing whenever.  Going back to the routine is unappealing unless you create a positive goal.  In this case, you can see that during summer time, keeping the garbage inside more than a day can attract roaches, ants and flies.  So taking it out, while not fun at the time is for the long term goal of a healthier kitchen.  How do you do it?  If everyone has their different ways, I choose to think about keeping it clean and not having young flies in my garbage.  It makes it easy to grab the garbage can and go outside.  While I do this, I keep aware that I am doing for a cleaner future... if you wish.  The chore becomes bearable and even something I look forward to, without actually "loving" it.

The holds true for anything else you do, whether it is work related to habits.  Remember that it takes once or twice to develop a bad habit, it takes at least 7 times to acquire a good one.  The gist is to do it with a purpose, seeing the goal and being mindful of the present.

Enjoy it.

Important News

I will shut down the blog for a little while until I restart it with a different provider.  This does not reflect anything negative on TypePad but I need to revamp the content and structure.

In the meantime, check in at NickZart.com or at TapTheSource.com to see the latest news.

See you soon.

Nick

California Earthquake, An Exercise In Civic Duty

As you might have heard, Los Angeles had a good scale 5.0 earthquake last night that was felt all the way to San Diego.

As it happened, we were back from a weekend rally with the Alfa Romeo club and I was soaking in a hot tub when it happened.  It was a strange feeling.  Though I come from a part of the world where tremors are not uncommon, having lived in Japan has taught me to be careful but this one, at least in Casa Grande was strong.  Just as a reminder, Casa Grande was made in 1928 with re-enforced concrete and has survived the big one in 1933 .  So we feel fairly safe here.

It felt as if a block of rock was thrown on the roof.  We felt the upper level had collapsed.  The place rumbled and then went into its rolling movement for about 15 seconds or so.  15 seconds that seemed to never end.  You feel utterly powerless, at the Mercie of whatever can happen.  It is a very humbling experience.

We rushed out to make sure everyone was OK, our close neighbors and those living alone.  What was weird is that we were the only ones making sure others were alright.  Most people were there, shaking off the feeling and calling.  In fact, some of my friends were acting cool and not phased.  I feel that is not an intelligent way of dealing with an earthquake, any quake.  We shouldn't be so blase that anything under 6.5 is thought of as yet just another tremor. 

Virginia was next to my Great-grand mother's armoire that had heavy things inside, along some good sized crystals on top.  It occurred to us that anyone living alone, or alone in their homes could have had something fall on them be left unconscious.  That's why it makes sense to us to think of others and be pro-active instead of that make-believe cool.  Sometimes the little details make all the difference.

The Twitter Revolution

In a world of less face-to-face and more online activity, its no wonder we look for contact.

Blogs have taken over the world by storm ever since a few years ago.  FaceBook and MySpace have shown how much people need to be in contact with each other, while behind a computer.  Twitter, the new revolution taking the word by storm is also introducing a way to keep i touch in as little as a few hundred letters.

The great paradox is that we want to be independent while having an online "community."  In a strange twist, being online means being alone.  So can 140 words really explain who am I?  Can it really convey my being?  Maybe not in so little time and space but it does one thing.  It helps me condense my thoughts to a gist.  Most of my posts have a "gist" part so that people car read the essential, even if they miss the rest, they get it.

I come from a generation that was taught to embellish our writing, to make it appealing, sometimes taking long winded sentence structure as the epitome of artful communication.  With Twitter and my blogs, I have to condense so that even my short attention span can read what I have to say, in a gist.

And yes, you can follow the electric car blog I contribute with on Twitter by following: 33Nick

Disciplining Kids Does Not Mean Being Mean

As I tutor small kids here and there, I have come see two things.  Those who are eager to work and those who are not.  Who will have problems tomorrow?

The kids who like to learn and are eager to do so, usually are well behaved and tend to be quicker and problem solving.  I also notice that their parental structure is more uniformed, more present.  The kids who are defiant, don't like to study and generally would rather play, throw tantrums and  grow up to be problems kids.

It's hard watching it.  You want to reach out and tell parents that spoiling them today is not an act of love but one that will make them miserable tomorrow.  How?  What will happen when these kids grow up and confronted to the ones who understand the rules and limits, have learned more?  Eventually, intelligence alone doesn't cut it, it's how you apply it.  It's called wisdom.  Parents need to be there for their children, strict in a loving way.  Spoiling kids today is a sure way to make them miserable tomorrow.