The complete essay can be downloaded below.

The complete essay is available as a download below.

Last night, my family saw the 1994 movie “Don Juan Demarco” on Netflix with Johnny Depp and Marlon Brando. It was funny, heart-warming, sensual, intelligent and very well acted. We were transported from our everyday world of people struggling with their desire to get more out of life and work to a place where life was either a romantic adventure or nothing at all.

Romance is “Ardent emotional attachment or involvement.”The opposite of “Romance” is to “depreciate, minimize, play down, reduce or understate. Secretly, and starting with the Lone Ranger as my childhood hero,   I think that’s what I’ve always felt, but never had the courage to be direct. As a consultant, I’ve sold companies imaginative thinking, team building, culture change, breakthrough results and executive coaching.. People were helped, money was made, and customers served. But inevitably, a prior context of order and control, power and position would creep back in. In some measure, my experience was  like the Ernst and Young training video where the guy says, “I always wanted to be a Lion Tamer but I’m afraid, so I’m trying to work it out as an accountant.”

T . S. Eliot captured this in his poem. “The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock.”

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare? And “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

Do I dare?
Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

Here then are some “New Rules” for having life and work be either a romantic adventure or nothing at all.

Rule Number One: Stop needing anybody’s agreement ever for who you are and how you are being. Stop needing any agreement for the legitimacy of your heart felt projects. Speak about them powerfully and always say what inspires you. Act as if  this is your world, you own it, it’s your stage and others can play if they wish.  If  not, it can’t be helped.

Rule Number Two: Pay attention to what you love and to what truly attracts you. All that matters is that you are attracted in that your inner energy is moving out into the world. Be specific about this in the words you speak, where you look, who you associate with, where you go. Feel free to be dramatic in speech and dress consistent with what lifts your spirit.

Rule Number Three: Know in your blood that your power and impact is coming from the way people contrast your way of being, moment by moment, with their own attitude and experience. Know that’s the rest is only words.

Rule Number Four: Fully accept people and situations exactly the way they are. Know that everything you do or wish you could do to change them creates resistance, defeats your purpose, and makes a romantic adventure impossible. Let your experience flow through you.

Rule Number Five: Be content being stuck where you are. Prisoners who do “Hard Time” fight the fact that they are in jail and suffer. Prisoners who accept that they are in jail do “Easy Time” and are happier. In any moment, realize that you are where you are. Don Juan was content to be incarcerated and held to his self designed identity in the face of it. Freedom is the ability to choose how to be whatever the cost.

Rule Number Six: You do not have to do seek breakthroughs and extraordinary results in intentional and forceful ways. Follow the call of romantic adventure in word and deed and breakthroughs will follow while others join you because the path is so attractive.

The purpose of coaching is coaching is to help create the best life and work possible through the people you touch. A senior executive client I will see tomorrow feels depreciated , minimized played down, and understated. His boss has a boss has a boss. Starting with his wife and kids, he sits on a chain of number of human and bureaucratic bosses each resting on the one below. Only he can change this and he is responsible for all of it happening. The coach’s job is to help him turn this experience on it’s head.

Tomorrow, I will be Don Juan, the Coach.

Copyrighted by Charles E Smith Ph.D, February 2012

The complete essay can be downloaded by clicking the “download” button below.

Stop floating or drifting. Stop waiting for “someday.” Now is the time to own your path and start moving powerfully toward what you want.

Wake Up! Your Life Is Calling will get you there by inspiring you to:

• expand your universe of what you believe is possible
• develop the internal fire and vision to stop accepting a life that is “fine” and push for one that is truly extraordinary
• land your dream job, create that lasting relationship, and carve out time to achieve bigger goals.

The secret? The five essential principles for rewriting your tomorrow contained in this book. Your life is waiting.

Are you ready to dive in?

Perspective

Every exit is an entrance to somewhere else.” ~Tom Stoppard

Today Is Your Wake Up Call!

The next morning, my wife saw that I was dressed and ready to go. She gave me a surprised look and said, ‘I thought you were taking the later train today?’ She asked me whether we were still having breakfast together or if she should drive me to the station so I could make my normal train. Little did I know, at that moment, I was standing at the crossroads of my life and my answer to that innocent question would determine whether I lived or died . . .”

~Mike Jaffe

Sometimes it’s the small decisions that make the biggest differences in our lives. That was the case on that day in September when I had to make a split-second decision on whether or not I’d keep my promise to my family to have breakfast with them before heading to work. Sounds simple enough, right? Have breakfast with the family. But like so many other Americans, my work routine started early—and that meant no time for breakfast with my wife and one-year-old daughter. Except that day was supposed to be different. I had promised myself that work could wait. And, yet, there I was, all set to go to work early, like normal. If I caught my regular train, I’d be at my office by 8:45 AM.

There is a lot of drama built into that excerpt above. I’m not someone who gets entangled in too much drama, but I included it there for a reason. That statement above is part of the story I share with you below. My story. Of course, I didn’t know it at the time, but the small decision I made that day really did determine whether I lived or died.

Defining the Wake Up Call

Before I share that story more fully I want to return to our  focus for this book, which is about designing and living an extraordinary life, starting today. For many of us, including me, the ability to accomplish this amazing and worthwhile goal starts with a realization—with a wakeup call. But what does that really mean—a wakeup call?

1. Make small career appointments with yourself

You may be thinking that you’ll wait until the weekend to work on your career because that’s when you have large chunks of time available. However, that’s the recipe for burnout because you will then lose your rest and rejuvenation time.

It’s more effective to schedule smaller periods of time—60 to 90 minutes each—during both the week and weekend. This will decrease your feeling of being overwhelmed and help avoid burnout. In return, it will increase your productivity and personal accountability because you will be far more likely to do it when it’s less daunting.

2.  Maintain positivity

A successful job hunt looks like this: no, no, no, no, no, no…yes! You will likely be inundated with rejections or a series of silences during your search. Being resilient and maintaining a positive perspective is critical to your progress.

If you start to engage in negative self-talk or focus on the economic state of the country, you will derail yourself energetically and behaviorally. You’ll get off course. You’ll be less productive. You’ll have a higher probability of increased rumination and anxiety. You will become depressed. None of this is helpful during the job search process. By keeping your focus on what you want rather than what’s wrong, you will maintain momentum and reach your goal sooner.

3. Use the Internet relationally

Very few jobs are found using the blind resume submission process or by posting your resume online. Most jobs are still found through personal contacts and connections. However, you can leverage your personal and professional relationships strategically by using the Internet relationally.

For example, LinkedIn is an outstanding website for professionally connecting with others. Think of it as six degrees of separation for job hunting purposes. It allows you to leverage your contacts to find targeted companies and individuals that can help you to: 1) land an interview, 2) get more information about an industry or company, and 3) secure an informational interview.

Working with clients and prospects appears quite similar.
1. If you want to get someplace, you are not likely to get there if they don’t share your vision for the destination.
2. If some of the members of the client’s team are neutral and not working against you, you can still reach your intended destination. But, all it takes is one disruptive oar in the water to get you spinning in circles.
3. If your efforts are coordinated, you can reach your destination (a.k.a. successful sale) faster than otherwise.
4. If you don’t lead the process, rest assured that someone else will pick up an oar and plot a new course… and you may not like the trip or the destination.

Be sure to take the time to jointly develop a vision for what you client needs, and see what you can do to encourage them to row along with you. Above all, if you don’t continue to play the role of captain, don’t be surprised if you end up on a different course (potentially with sharks).

Thank you to my son for illustrating some valuable lessons during a great adventur

What is this magical system? It’s known as intuition. Long thought of as a woman’s gift, smart men also trust their ‘gut feeling’ or ‘hunch.’ Can this skill be taught? Medical intuitive and author Caroline Myss, PhD, answers this way: “I can teach anyone to read music, but few people are Chopin.” In my experience, some clients are highly intuitive and others are just getting used to accessing this source of guidance. To access the guidance your intuition offers, you just have to learn how. It’s a skill that can be developed like working a muscle. Assessments (e.g. Myers Briggs, Profile XT™, etc.) show us that some people are more logically oriented and some are more intuitively oriented.

Intuition has been called our ‘sixth sense.’ We as coaches can assist our clients in recognizing and using this additional source of knowing.

This essay first appeared in choice magazine (vol. 9, no. 4). The complete essay can be downloaded by clicking download button below.

The current times, highlighted by fear and framed in economic losses and global natural disasters, call for unusual responses and solutions from our clients. Working with people to reinvent their careers since 9/11 and more intensely in the last three years has only strengthened my resolve that coaches are the voice of their client’s intuition. We receive feedback and champion the truth about what our clients want at the deepest level. Those truths are leading people to new, satisfying ways of working, jobs they never thought they’d get and career and life changes that make people greater contributors in the world.

This article first appeared in choice (vol. 9, no. 4) by Laura Berman Fortgang. The full article can be downloaded by clicking the button below