40 HOUR CCE - ICF APPROVED COURSE - Your Coaching Skills 360

If you are a credentialed coach with the International Coach Federation and need to renew your credential - there is good news! A 40 hour approved CCE course entitled Your Coaching Skills is coming in August 2012! This course is an 8 week virtual course of study that includes a coaching practicum. It is fun and fast paced and incorporates the teachings of the East and the West. This course is designed to create a stronger sense of self-awareness, building on your current coaching presence, current skill set and use of self for greater coaching effectiveness. If interested, please drop me a note at kathy@impelpeople.com.

Are you an Adrenaline Addict?

I heard the term "adrenaline addict" used the other day in a workshop I attended and have been thinking about it ever since. So I did some research and found some great information about adrenaline and how it can impact our quality of life and am excited to share it with you.

In lay person terms, basically adrenaline is a hormone produced by the two adrenal glands located on top of our kidneys. These glands secrete adrenaline directly into the blood stream. Adrenaline is then carried by the blood to all the different parts of the body. It increases your heart rate, raises your blood pressure, and is associated with carrying blood away from certain areas of your brain and internal organs and into your muscles. As a result, adrenaline can increase speed and strength and decrease feeling pain. A large amount of adrenaline released into your system all at once causes what is often called an adrenaline dump, rush, or surge. All of these effects are designed to prepare your body to either run away or to fight. The rush can make you feel energized or it can make you feel shaky or weak – depending on the situation causing the adrenaline to be released.

What's interesting to me is that the same three ways people react to an adrenaline rush resulting in a perceived danger situation are the same three ways people react to an adrenaline rush resulting in the need to act quickly concerning making an important decision or embarking on a complex project. Canadian self defense expert, Tony Blauer says the natural adrenline response by people reacting to a phyiscal attack are:

1. Denial: "This can't be happening"
2. Reality: "This is happening"
3. Resolve: "This is not going to happening"

In the normal course of a day, we may find ourselves in situations that bring forth the adrenaline rush unexpectedly. For example, in a work setting, you may be asked to meet an unreasonable deadline, achieve a difficult target on a project, or have a tough but necessary conversation with someone. You may be asked to make a decision that could impact your life significantly and/or compromise those closest to you. In these everyday situations, adrenaline will kick in and I believe that our natural adreline response to a physical attack is the same for these situations.

Denial – Reality – Resolve.

Patrick Lencioni, president of the Table Group, says in his essay "The Painful Reality of Adrenaline Addiction":

"Executives with adrenaline addiction are the ones always pecking away at their Blackberries during meetings, talking on their cell phones during every five-minute break from those meetings, and checking e-mail late at night. They go from meeting to meeting to meeting with no time in between for reflection or thought. Always overwhelmed, adrenaline junkies seem to have a constant need for urgency, even panic, to get them through the day. They cannot grasp the race driver's motto: you have to slow down to go fast. Instead, they keep their foot on the pedal at full throttle, convinced that any deceleration is lost opportunity."

Sound familiar? Overtime we become addicted to adrenaline – perhaps even rely on it to get us through the day. We keep going and going and going – like the energizer bunny until we come to a complete halt. That halt may result in feeling overwhelmed, tired, agitated, frustrated and in some instances manifesting further in phyiscal and mental health issues. That halt can and does have a significant and potential deterimental impact on our personal and professional lives.

So what can we do?

First, you can take the adrenaline addict assessment @ http://www.synergyunlimited.net/adrenaline-addict.htm.

Here are some articles that you might find interesting and helpful:

www.leadershipreview.org/2005winter/LencioniArticle.pdf
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/32282/the_abcs_of_the_adrenal_glands.html?cat=5
http://www.allbusiness.com/human-resources/employee-development-time-management/3903596-1.html

Let me know what you learn and how I can support you!!!! Looking forward to hearing from you.

2010 Holiday Season

This year has certainly been a challenging year - to say the least. With every challenge, however, there is always an opportunity. As the year draws to a close it's time to start thinking about the new year and new opportunities. Keep that thought in mind as we begin the 2010 holiday season.

Thanksgiving is tomorrow and it brings with it mixed emotions. I am thankful for the time I will spend with family and friends. I am thankful for the food that will be served. I am thankful for all my clients, colleagues, and students and I am thankful to be here on this earth at this momentous time of rapid and progressive transition in our history.

I do find that the end of the year is an exciting time and a sad time for me. It's exciting as I look to the possibilities and it is sad as I say goodbye to the events of the year (great business opportunities gained and lost; experiences good and some not so good, family members who have passed on, victories and disappointments) and the list goes on and on.

The cycle of life is interesting, isn't it? So many births and deaths....beginnings and endings...

As 2010 draws to a close, what new beginnings are waiting for you? What do you need to bring to an end this year? What are you thankful for and how will 2011 be different?

Let's begin this 2010 holiday season with a sincere appreciation for the memories of 2010 and a ferocious appetite for the possibilities of 2011!!

Peace and best wishes!

Kathy

Find Your Mojo - Join Marshall Goldsmith on August 5, 2010

Find your MOJO and keep it! Guest Teleseminar for August 5 @ 8pm NY EDT

Marshall Goldsmith, best-selling author, speaker, and world's preeminant leadership coach
will join our very own Leon VanderPol in this extraordianary conversation.

Marshall is a master teacher and communicator who provides insightful, clear and practical
wisdom to improving your MOJO and increasing your personal happiness.

Lets spread the word! If you know someone who would be interested in attending this outstanding
event, share this link with them: http://tinyurl.com/ICATeleseminarRegistration

Hi everyone!

Hope you are well on your path to living your best life --- your way!!

I spent a considerable amount of time this year aligning my vision and values with my passions and am looking forward to sharing with you what I learned about myself, my colleagues, my family and my local and global community.

I will be offering several seminars, workshops and teleconferences on a variety of topics covering life, career, health and holistic balance. I will also be introducing you to amazing and interesting guest bloggers who are living purposeful, inspired and conscious lives.

Life is a continuous learning experience and we know that learning involves developing new skills and embracing new behaviors so check back often to meet the guest bloggers and to get class information, fees and availability.

Peace & Joy,

Kathy

Live a Life by Design

I was quite flattered when Kathy asked me to be the guest blogger this month. Sharing my journey to find, and live my passion is truly a privilege. I hope my story inspires you to take the actions necessary to live your dreams. Ok, so a little bit of background about me… I grew up in Metro-Detroit and attended the University of Michigan (Go Blue!). After graduation, I went to work for Procter and Gamble Distributing Company in Sales and had a wonderful career. About 10 years in (right around the time the stock price at P&G went from $150 to $50 per share) I decided to enter the full time MBA program at Southern Methodist University. While there, I expanded my world by studying abroad in both Asia and Australia. After graduation, I embarked on a new career in Human Resources working for both Raytheon Company and General Mills… that is where the story takes an interesting turn.

Ever wanted to live a life by design and spend your day your way?

Well in 2006 I decided to do just that. I was working for General Mills as the HR lead for one of the manufacturing facilities. I liked the work, but was not thrilled about the location; living as a single woman in Albuquerque, NM was not my idea of fun. I was far from family and friends and found this part of the Southwest to be a wonderful place to raise a family, there was just one problem I didn’t have a family. In June, my father had a stroke on the heals of my mother healing from breast cancer. I decided I had been away from Detroit long enough. So I left the “dream job” moved home and became a partner in a coaching and consulting firm.

Clients consistently ask me why my coaching mantra is to live a life by design, not by accident. Well, I realized while working at P&G that I “fell” into the opportunity. I did not even know who P&G was until 2 weeks before I was selected to interview at age 18. When I got ready to leave the company in 2000, I realized that I had taken assignments in locations and divisions I was not overly excited about or committed to. That realization was the beginning of my journey to living a life by design. While in grad school, I decided to step outside my “box” and spent six months living and traveling thru Australia. No one could believe I made the decision to go… much less go by myself. It was the BEST time of my life and set me on the path to becoming the woman I am today. The experience taught me to take risks and to be open to the gifts life has in store. I realized that the world can be both a generous and loving place, all we have to do is be open to receive.

For most of my life I coached other people, you know the type – the person everyone comes to for advice and perspective. I thought that coaching others only happened in the world of HR so off I went. I was so excited in early 2006 to discover there was another option … coaching was an actual profession. After training with CoachU, I joined a coaching collaborative where I work in the most creative, innovative and supportive environment. There are days we ask ourselves do we really get paid to do this?? As a Human Capital Management and Sales Leadership Expert most of my clients work in HR, Sales, Executive Leadership or are Entrepreneurs; although recently I have been attracting all types to my practice. Working with leaders and their teams to improve their business results and personal performance is truly an honor.

I am so blessed to be living a life of contribution, one in which my values, priorities and work are fully integrated. A friend recently asked me how I do it all: volunteer for a social organization and at my church, take care of my parents, work as a partner in the firm and make time for friends and family. I had to tell her that I live the life I designed, creating space for all I deem important. Most of my clients call me fortunate when we meet. At the end of the coaching experience, my clients realize how fortunate they are and are even more excited about the life and success they have created for themselves.

One of the distinct features of my coaching program is shadow coaching. This is a unique opportunity to have a coach “shadow” your every move in a typical day, and help you understand how you show up in your world. Clients find they glean amazing insights and are able to transform who, and how they are in the world at an exponential rate. I worked with the CEO of an organization who during our shadow coaching discovered a recent change he made in delivering information (trying to respond positively to 360 feedback) was simply making the situation worse. We had an opportunity to discuss several instances where he did not get the response he was intending. By the end of the day, he made amends with a direct report (they had been having problems for months) and was well on his way to becoming the transformational leader he has always wanted to be. Shadow coaching is my most requested service and in many ways my most rewarding.

The biggest life lesson I have learned is that you do not know what people go home to, if they have a home at all. You never know what someone is dealing with so in all that I do I try to let my light shine on others in a way that is healing, loving, and nurturing.

The best part of my work you ask… having the opportunity to help people define their dreams, create a plan, and manifest their destiny.

If you are ready to live your life by design visit us on the web at www.3Cconsult.com or email me at cornelia@3Cconsult.com.

Reiki and The India Foundation

Sushweta and I are both Reiki practitioners in India and have access to a fantastic person, Bijan Chatterjee, who is a Reiki Grand Master. We have seen him perform unbelievable psychic acts which prove beyond doubt that there is a form of "Higher Intelligence" from which we can all draw. He is also gifted in Karuna Reiki. Please allow me to share a secret with you -- my wife Sushweta is a far better Reiki channel than me and can do amazing diagnosis of complete strangers just by running her hands 3 inches away up and down their bodies, no touching. She can be very accurate about their ailments even before they say anything.

Do you know why she is better than me? It's because she surrenders completely to Reiki with no holding back. I on the other hand suffer from a bit of arrogance about my 2 bit earthly wisdom (gathered from books I've read) which somewhere in my subconscious prevents me from totally letting go of my Rational Self and surrendering fully to Reiki. BUT-------I'm trying to overcome this weakness and maybe soon will enter the world of true Humility shorn of all pride. That is the portal to Meditation and Reiki practice.

Reiki has made me evolve. I would not say transform because I feel the basic traits in me are constant. But Reiki has opened my mind and my insides to the universe and I can breathe more oxygen, feel the "beauty" in human beings more than see the negative, and it has also given me the ability to "weigh" situations in the light of values. This helps me refrain from "indicting" immediately. I wait and give the other person an opening to explain. Maybe working with children for 25 years in various schools has also helped me in this.

In the last 5 to 7 years, Sushweta and I have loved the concepts of:

Synchronicity of Jung & Paulli
Power of Prayer and Morphic Fields of Rupert Sheldrake
Particle Pysicists David Bohm & Niels Bohr describing Energy Fields and their forces
Our Gayatri Mantra that says the same thing
Krishna's dialogue with Arjuna in the Mahabharata which is the "Bhagavat Gita' and where a Higher Intelligence is spoken of.
Sri Aurobindo's "Supra Consciousness"
The Institute of Noetic Science's(IONS) research by Dean Radin

All of these teachings point to a single direction-------Reiki and Positive Thinking!

As I conclude this post, I want to mention The India Foundation which my wife and I created in response to a simple question that asked what we would do if we could light a candle instead of cursing the darkness that India often feels. Sushweta quit her job as a School Principal & English Teacher to do this full time, and I take time out from my manufacturing business to help out. The India Foundation is a non-profit trust with dreams of promoting India and presenting our country in a unique way. Please visit www.theindiafoundation.org to learn more.

Gautam Mukerjee