Hello again every­one! What an awe­some time to be alive, don’t you think? Well, since my last col­umn, there’s been a lot go­ing on in this guy’s life! I’ve moved to South Car­olina, from Iowa. I’ve res­cued an amaz­ing puppy, Baby Bella. I’ve been key note speaker for mul­ti­ple speak­ing en­gage­ments, been of­fered a full time po­si­tion as a Spir­i­tual Di­rec­tor within a Unity Spir­i­tual Cen­ter and I am still LOV­ING LIFE!!
Which Brings me to the topic for this month: We are be­ings, not do­ings!

As I stated in my prior col­umn, for what­ever rea­son, I grew up learn­ing to be a “Doer”. I built a cor­po­rate ca­reer up to a V.P. of Sales, gained the ed­u­ca­tion to match and learned to live full out “Do­ing” in my at­tempt to suc­ceed in life.  It was­n’t un­til my late 20’s I started to re­al­ize what the term “peo­ple pleas­ing” meant and it took a few more years to re­al­iz­ing how much of my life I spent try­ing to earn love, suc­cess, ful­fill­ment through do­ing. I’m so grate­ful I don’t have to live like that to­day and I’m in sta­tic to get to spend my life help­ing oth­ers break out of that un­re­ward­ing, un­ful­fill­ing role in their lives as well!! To­day, as I’m liv­ing my pas­sion, Coach­ing, Speak­ing, Men­tor­ing and Writ­ing, I know in or­der for me to en­joy the jour­ney I need to look at some of my pat­terns and par­a­digms. Oth­er­wise, what I’m do­ing will al­ways lead to the same old process I in­stinc­tively fol­lowed. Work, work, and more work.

In op­po­si­tion with pop­u­lar be­lief, it’s not about the ef­fort you place on what you are try­ing to ac­com­plish so much as it’s about (RE­ALLY) en­joy­ing the process. And against what you may be­lieve, by tak­ing the time to have fun in life and let go of the task list, you will ac­tu­ally net more re­sults. And quicker! Once you have a clear vi­sion for what you would love in your life, every­thing for­ward is about un­fold­ing. That’s what I spe­cial­ize in help­ing peo­ple get very spe­cific about. A clear vi­sion!

WHAT???? You may ask.

Be­cause I love uti­liz­ing my life as my great­est teacher into my lifes-lessons, as it shows in my book “Lifes Lessons”, I’m go­ing to uti­lize an ex­am­ple from my life here to il­lus­trate my point. Three weeks ago, I spent a week fo­cus­ing dili­gently on adding ad­di­tional speak­ing en­gage­ments and ini­ti­at­ing an­other group of coach­ing clients. I sent the emails, made the phone calls, reached out. I came up with three pages of to-do’s. You know, the kind of ef­forts one goes through in or­der to en­sure suc­cess, as if the con­trol of suc­cess is re­ally within the “do­ing.” I’m sure a lot of folks can share in that process, right?

The third day in, I felt that ex­haus­tive feel­ing start­ing to over­come me and I lacked that feel­ing of “lov­ing my life” that I’ve be­come ac­cus­tomed to. Be­cause I be­lieve the best coaches have coaches, dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with my coach, this topic came up and I was re­minded that my “JOB” in life is to have fun. To en­joy what I want to en­joy and my “WORK” is to have clear vi­sions for what I want. Upon re­al­iz­ing this, I took the time to do the work that I teach my clients and upon com­plet­ing my vi­sion, I spent the day hav­ing fun. I rode my mo­tor­cy­cle to this re­ally cool lit­tle town about an hour away for break­fast, when I got back home, I drove to a botan­i­cal gar­den, met some friends for “A Course in Mir­a­cles” class and en­joyed a healthy lunch in a cute lit­tle town I had­n’t dis­cov­ered un­til that day.

Dur­ing my drive home, I re­ceived a phone call from a young man who was stuck in life and asked for my as­sis­tance as a coach­ing client. NUM­BER 1. When I ar­rived home, there were two emails wait­ing for me. Not one, but TWO! One was for a speak­ing en­gage­ment and the other was for an­other po­ten­tial coach­ing client, which I’m ex­cited to share is now an ac­tive client. OK, now here’s the kicker to it all. Not one of those com­mu­ni­ca­tions came from my ef­forts the prior three days. In fact, weeks later, I’ve still not re­ceived any busi­ness from those days of la­bor.

My point is this. You will not achieve suc­cess sim­ply by ef­fort­ing it to be. We are “BE­INGS”, not “DO­INGS” and it’s within the do­ing, that life is sucked from our be­ings. So try to take some time this month and give your­self a break from all the daily do­ings and re­ally al­low your­self to “BE.” I’ll bet you will walk away grate­ful for your ex­pe­ri­ence in do­ing so and I hope to hear back from you! please feel free to leave a com­ment or reach out to me at IFGT­coach­ing@gmail.com

Please feel free to leave a com­ment or I can be con­tacted at IFGT­coach­ing@gmail.com and check out my weekly Coaches Cor­ner Video at My U-Tube Chan­nel.