1.What are your disappointments, failures, and breakdowns?
Take the time to acknowledge these and be with them. Know that they create opportunities to learn and grow. Celebrate the courage and energy you put into them, regardless of the outcome.

2. Successes, Wins and Accomplishments
What have you achieved this year? Where did you really step into your power and greatness? What did you step up to do, say, be? What movement did you make? What do you feel really proud of? How did you surprise yourself? Look through your organizer to remind you. No modesty allowed here. And the little stuff counts too.

3.What have you learned about yourself and your life?
What insights have you gained though this year of living? In what ways have you grown? True insights have the transformational capability of shifting us into a new, more alive place. Take this time to note your new understanding.

4.What are you grateful for?
This list might include some of the above and anything else you truly appreciate about yourself or any other area of your life. There is a basic principle that whatever you appreciate and give thanks for will increase in abundance in your life.

5. How will you celebrate and honour your 2011 accomplishments?
What would be a fun, special thing to do mark the year? Make it private or public, but do take the time to acknowledge your growing. Look at who you are becoming! Toast yourself, buy that shiny thing, or treat yourself.

6. Greatest Hits
Create a list of your top hits for the year. What made the year memorable? Things you discovered, enjoyed, saw, heard, wore, or ate. Trips, foods, people, memories, accomplishments, songs – anything that was the cream of the crop for you.

7. Special People
Who were the people who contributed to your year? Who made it special? Who helped make the good stuff happen? Who did you spend happy time with? We couldn’t do it without them.

Now, to get the most out of this exercise, share your answers to questions 1-6 with the people in question 7.

At the Edinburgh Coaching Centre there’s a new monthly series of free open taster workshops – come along, tell your friends!

Since it’s January, the first one’s all about looking to the year ahead.
It’s called “Creating the 2011 You Want“
7.30-9pm
20th January
Edinburgh Coaching Centre
38 Hamilton Place
Edinburgh
EH3 5DN

RSVP here at the Facebook page!

I’ve teamed up with some of Edinburgh’s other top coaches to create the Edinburgh Coaching Centre.
We’re now open for growth and development for people and businesses.

We’d love you – and of course your friends – to join us to celebrate our launch.

When?   6.30pm, Tuesday 2nd November
Where?    38 Henderson Row, EH3 5DN

We’re a group of top Edinburgh-based coaches with a range of specialities.
Whether it’s business coaching, life coaching or coach training you’re interested in, this is the place to come.

• discover how coaching can transform your life or business
• register for our upcoming free workshops
• book a free life coaching or business coaching session
• consume free wine and nibbles

So we can make sure to get enough supplies, please RSVP:

Mark – 0797 660 7337  mark@markthecoach.co.uk

Thanks, and we look forward to seeing you!

You may well already know this – it’s no big secret. However, do you really harness its power to help you get stuff done with less struggle? Anything you do regularly can benefit from having its particular physical place. Whether it’s the ironing, seeing to bills, blogging or settling down with a book, if everything has its physical space, it helps you get into the headspace. And that makes for an easier life.

PS By the way, it occurs to me this is a good argument for only having one TV per household.

Nonsense.

As a friend of mine recently pointed out, complaint comes about through caring about something. That means you can use it to zoom in on your passion. And passion is the basis for really effective and committed action.

So, properly handled, a complaint is the signpost to the solution, not an obstacle. In fact, very often, just being aware of the passion takes the sting out of the complaint. Here’s a (possibly apparently silly) example.

The other day it was raining, and I was complaining. Behind the complaint was the fact that I wanted to go outside. Of course, if I did, I’d get wet – hence the grumbling. When it’s stripped down to “I want to be outside and dry,” it’s simple – get an umbrella out of the cupboard. So I did. And it was great! I even managed to help an umbrella-less lady across the road in the dry of my own brolly. As well as getting what I wanted, I made a new friend!

So, what are you complaining about, what’s the passion, and what positive action is it pointing to?

It just happened to me (not for the first time, of course.) I was brushing my teeth, and my wife said “Why don’t you brush your tongue?” With great relish she pointed out that it gets exposed to all the crap my teeth get etc (I’ll spare you the detail). Why not clean it at the same time? Well, it all makes perfect sense, and I totally agree.

Not knowing and not agreeing often aren’t the reason we don’t do things. Mostly it’s a simple question of habit. We do an awful lot of what we do unconsciously, even if we’re aware of doing it. So while I consciously decide to brush my teeth, and am aware of doing it, the actual brushing is automatic. There are probably improvements I’d make straight away if I did it in a fully conscious way. But it works fine as it is, and hey, who’s got the time?

It’s similar in our lives more generally. We keep on doing things habitually that we know we’d benefit from changing. Habits have ways of really making themselves at home. They can seem hard to change. They can even seem like they’re inevitable, immutable truths. But in fact, they’re just repetitions.

Creating new futures is literally a question of changing habits. Find a habit that doesn’t work for you, drop the habit. Maybe create a new habit that does work for you.

Obviously that could well be easier said than done. But just knowing you’re dealing with a habit rather than a struck-in-marble truth helps you start the process. You’re not fighting the world, you’re just fighting your own repetitive ways of behaving or seeing things.

You could also say it makes it a lot easier to crash, especially when you get to the downhill parts. Things aren’t what they normally are. What if something you’re not prepared for happens? What if something that seems solid collapses?

Is this sounding familiar, in a metaphor-for-current-times sort of way? I thought so.

I noticed a couple of other things. It was surprising just how easy it actually was to ride in the snow. It was different, I had to watch what I was doing. But as I got used to the conditions, I discovered a new way to ride. It wasn’t just about coping – new things were possible. And guess what – it was brilliant fun.

The way things are just now means we need to do things differently. But as I discovered today on my bike, that doesn’t mean it’s all about struggling to survive. By being aware of the current conditions you can adapt, even take advantage of the situation. You might even have some fun. It’s doing what you did in the past, before conditions changed, that results in you hitting the trees.

Maybe that’s what they mean when they say “We live in interesting times.”

So here’s what I want to get off my chest.

At its most basic level coaching is about clarifying where you are, where you want to get to, what you need to do to get there, and being accountable. That’s essentially getting a to-do list in place and making sure it gets done, thus achieving the goal. This is in itself a valuable thing, and some coaching models focus mainly on this.

But the really juicy part of coaching comes in when you get stuck with any part of this process. Getting clear about things can itself be a big challenge. Thinking about what you actually want rather than why you can’t have it can be a big shift. Then there’s the myriad ways we hold ourselves back and trip ourselves up, stopping ourselves getting there. Coaching can help you deal with these rather than continuing to avoid and work round them.

And why is this so juicy? This is where the gold is, because

THE SAME THING WILL BE HAVING A NEGATIVE IMPACT ELSEWHERE IN YOUR LIFE.

Maybe even quite a few places. It’s just the start. So I regard problems as the way in to a whole realm of possibility. This is where the listening my client referred to comes in.

In this sense, problems are your friend. They show you the way.

“That’s some job,” I said. I was thinking, this is one of those things we depend on being done, but don’t usually see. What if he didn’t do it?

“Aye,” he replied. “There’s 2,600 bus stops in this town, and this is my second last one.”

“WOW! You must be ready for a pint!” I quipped.

We shared a laugh, he put up the new timetable and finished up. The bus came, I got on and sat in the front of the top deck. And then, as the bus proceeded down the road, I saw him at the next stop. He finished the last one and stepped back, looking very pleased. That was a real moment of fulfillment, completion and happiness, and I got to witness it. It felt warm.

The thing is I could so easily have missed it. That says to me that there’s moments like that all around, all the time. It’s not important to see them individually – just know that they’re there. (Hey, maybe some of them are yours!) Then suddenly you’re in a world of success and fulfillment. How cool is that?