Rules for Being Human-Keys To Self Growth

Rules for Being Human

These rules are consistent to everyone. It doesn't matter where you are or where you are from these rules apply to your life. If you can embrace them, your self growth will truly show itself.

1.  You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period this time around.

2.  You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time, informal school called Life. Each day in this school, you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think them stupid and irrelevant.

3.  There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error, experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately “works.”

4.  A lesson is repeated until learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.

5.  Learning lessons does not end. There is no part of Life that does not contain lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.

6.  “There” is no better than “here.” When your “there” has become a  “here,” you will simply obtain another “there” that will again look better than “here.”

7.  Others are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something that you love or hate about yourself.

8.  What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.

9.  Your answers lie inside of you. The answer to Life’s questions lie inside of you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.

10.  This will often be forgotten, only to be remembered again.

From the book If Life is a Game, These are the Rules by Cherie Carter-Scott

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Sticking with My Life Coaching Tools

I recently had the opportunity to appreciate my own insight into my life coaching tools. These tools that I use to help others I have a process by which I use them.  For many reasons I learned why I must stick with these tools.

In a social networking environment online, I met another coach. Her work is completely different than mine. She helps people who are reluctant to network and sell. Well, we were chatting on the phone and learning what we each do and thinking about how we could help each other when I got an idea. We could coach each other. She needs help with her relationship with an in-law and I had not been able to come up with a way to network in-person locally that worked for me. I was in the financial services business in the past and found the cold-calling part highly uncomfortable. More recently I have attended local networking groups and have found them either uncomfortable or unfruitful.The other life coach, lets call her Meg, has a very challenging relationship with her daughter-in-law. It was a great idea to help each other out.  I soon realized that I could not rush my life coaching tools into the situations. We needed to take our time and get to know each other and follow what I know works when coaching someone on deep issues.

Turns out Meg gave me a brilliant idea to start my own networking group via meetup.com and I have and the first meeting is next week and it seems that it has gone over very will from the people who’ve joined and are going to attend. So basically my issue appears to be solved. But hers is bigger and will likely take her longer to master.

In an unconscious attempt at trying to help her quickly so our situations and the help we provided each other wouldn’t feel so out of balance, I hurried my process which often includes telling stories of examples of how things worked for me or others - as a teaching tool. But I swamped her with stories in a short period of time. Fortunately, we both realized this error and have come up with a possible solution. We are both comfortable with open, clean communication (a sign of a highly functioning coach), so I have no doubt this will work out fine.

I commit to remember  my own life coaching tools that works and can’t be pushed or pulled for a friend or another life coach or anyone. That doesn’t mean there isn’t flexibility but rather all the parts need to happen to honor each person’s special situation.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Does Your Life Coach Tell You the Hard Things?

Things you should be hearing...

On a regular basis if you tell friends of yours things like:

• "Are you telling yourself the truth about being happy with your weight?"
• "I don't work for nothing."
• "How many things of the many we brainstormed together have you actually done to expand your business? Make a list of all of them, next to it put how much or how many times you have done and then email me each time you do one."
• "Do you think your son is telling you the whole truth? What do you think is really true?"
• "If you put that much money on your credit card and give him the money, what will be his incentive to pay you back?"
• "You have trained him to treat you with no respect."
• "Do you actually have to spend so much money on the cleaners?"

My hand is raised. If yours is raised because you have recently told people these things or things like them all in the last couple of weeks, you are probably a life coach yourself or might want to thing about it.

Often the job of a life coach is to be willing to tell clients the hard things they pay you to hear because they've been ignoring their own inner voices that tell them the same things. It helps to hear it from another person with who you have set your goals and who will help you hold yourself to them.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching  

Benefits of Working with a Professional Life Coach

So many of us are striving to be successful in life. Often it is no easy task. We've all heard the success stories but tend to be more familiar with those who continue to struggle. Realizing they need an added shot of motivation, some have hired a life coach, an intimate procedure that can have a tremendous impact on your life.

A professional life coach can help you optimize your efforts from a career aspect, teaching you how to reach goals by showing you how you might be getting in your own way. A life coach has a personal goal to provide advice and helpful tips that allow you to maximize your potential and generate positive results.

Life coaching involves much more than helping you reach career goals. Financial success is important but personal situations play huge roles in our overall well-being. When teamed up with a professional life coach, you can learn how to become more familiar with your interior life and blocks that are keeping you from your success.

A life coach can help you in various areas whether you have experienced problems with finances or even relationships. Whatever your issues may be, there is an expert that can provide you with the valuable information needed to overcome some of life's most troubling woes.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching  

Is it narcissism or is it self-care?

You Might Have to Change Friends

I have a client who is successfully navigating a healthy relationship with a man for the first time in her 46 years! Her work on herself is wondrous. She has healed a scarily abusive childhood, healed very damaged self-esteem and most recently lost over 80 pounds. In chatting with her today, she commented that she is a "bit narcissistic". When we discussed what she meant by that, I realized she was really talking about self care.

I am not a therapist and I'm not going to look for a definition of narcissism that a therapist might use. I'm going to define narcissism to be what I understand from my therapist friends. As far as I understand narcissism is pretty much not being able to see beyond your own belly button. It's all about you. You are never wrong. All roads lead to you.

This is very different than being a person who observes their behavior and wants to see where and whether she is acting from self love.

If she is truly taking care of herself - most particularly when she has never really had a good relationship with a partner in her whole life and wants some very positive change, then deep, thoughtful, very observant self care is vital. That is not narcissism. That is not whatever else others have accused you of when you wanted to take care of yourself.

You were with the wrong people. People who truly love you, want and celebrate for you as you care for yourself. That means they support you having boundaries. That means they want you to express yourself authentically. They love you. Find and hang out with only those people.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Attract Abundance in "This Economy"!

How Can I Attract Abundance?

STOP WATCHING THE NEWS!

Every news media one reads or sees these days is predicting economic horrors or reporting on the current ones.  This cannot help you to attract abundance into your life.  Since I've been alive the past 70 years, I have lived though many different economies. What I've noticed is that just like people - they change and the change is constant.

My husband is a pretty smart guy and has a talent and gift for seeing the big picture. He says, after trying to scope it all out, that the economy is all in our minds. And I say, "We have control over those." Am I not noticing the facts? It is group consciousness that created the world economy such as it is and it is group consciousness that will create something different - one mind at a time.

Remember in the movie What the Bleep Do We Know? how we saw how we are biochemically addicted or our emotional states? (If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it.) The media knows this and is selling us the fear that is addictive. Because it is addictive it keeps us coming back for more and more and more. Ultimately, as we buy into the fear that they are selling and we are addicted to, our negative vibrations then create what we have - a big, negative mess.

How can we change it?

Taking responsibility for our own minds. To attract abundance we must filter what goes into our mind and feelings. The Law of Attraction works. It works in our individual lives and it works in our group conscious mind even bigger. The more we focus, the more we will get.

So my question to you is, WHERE IS YOUR MIND FOCUSED TODAY? Have you learned how to deal with and process through your negative feelings and emotions and keep finding a way to truly be positive? Not just the words, but the actual feelings.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Insecurity in Relationships

Insecurity in relationships starts inside yourself and generally shows up in a whole variety of ways in the relationship. Generally that happens because you didn’t speak up about what you wanted or what might be bothering you from the very beginning. Of course on your first date or even 3 months into it, it’s natural for there to be some insecurity. You don’t really know each other yet and relationships unfold over time but looking back at my first major relationship, it didn’t take more then six months for me to see the problems in our relationship. But I was so insecure, I was afraid of speaking up. I might lose the relationship altogether and my precarious self esteem was dependent on the world seeing me as a winner because I felt like such a loser.

I’ve worked with many people as their coach and seen the insecurity in their relationships. But I’m an expert on that insecurity inside my young self and I can now tell you where it came from and how it showed up.

It came from the lack of security I had with my parents. I was yelled at, compared in a losing way to other girls and criticized unmercifully and often - by my mother. I was always afraid my girlfriends would think I was a loser – so insecurity in relationships with peers showed up first.

Then there was the pressure to be popular, date and marry – all, for me, fraught with insecurity and self-doubt. Imagine you were looking at this beautiful young woman who thought she was a loser – who probably tried too hard and took almost any little attention by a male as good enough. She gets asked out by a good looking boy in her freshman history class. She’ll never have to worry about not having a date again. And so it went. And so we married and stayed together in our really lousy relationship for 19 years.

Some of the reasons for insecurity in relationships lay in childhood as they did in mine. Until I began to gain some self esteem and learned that I was important enough to say what was bothering me and how I felt about another’s behavior toward me, I would continuously experience insecurity in relationships. So will you.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Fears - Barriers to Personal Growth

Fears in Control?

Allowing fears to stop you from accomplishing what you want in life might be one of the most significant barriers to personal growth.

• Say you want to stop spending your life working for others, doing a job that is largely uncreative and unsatisfying to your soul. But you know how much money is coming in every month.

• What if you don't know what you do want to do or you know but have never been in your own business and don't know how to start or all your old messages of incompetence arise? Hire a coach.

The right life coach is in their own business so they certainly can teach and support you to do the same.

The life coach will help you deal with your negative self talk.

Many people have various different fears and no matter what they are about, they can be so strong that they are completely debilitating. Many life coaches will help you with tools and techniques to overcome your fear so you can follow a clear path towards your future.

A coach will give you tools and techniques to help you over come your barriers to personal growth, of course, but the most important thing that they can give you is the confidence in yourself to know that whatever your fear is, you can handle it. Sooner or later, as you progress with your coach you will suddenly feel so strongly that you can face that fear and do whatever it is you are so scared of,  you will just jump right in and do it.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

How to Determine If You Have Authentic Self Esteem

Ego or Self Esteem?

Self esteem is all about how you see yourself and how you feel about yourself as a person. Increasing your self esteem is normally considered a good thing but keep in mind that like with everything else there is an up side and a down side.

If you have a low self esteem and you raise it to a point where you feel good about who you are, this is a good thing. But if you raise your self esteem too high and you become too full of yourself, you can be hurtful to people you love. This is not such a good thing.

Many years ago on my own personal journey of finding authentic self esteem I got a very hard job selling financial products to school teachers. I worked extremely hard and succeeded mightily (at least according to those who measure success by how much money you make). My authentic self esteem, my sense of being able to accomplish a hard thing daily, did increase. But so did my need to let everyone I knew know how much money I was making. I blush to think how full of myself I was. (And I apologize to all my friends for my obnoxiousness.)

This is all about ego - that sneaking little aspect of your mind that tells you that you are either not good enough or too good. It compares you to someone else to make you wrong or it compares you to someone else to make you superior. Neither of these states constitutes authentic self esteem.

Ego feelings come from your head. Authentic self esteem comes from your heart or gut or spirit. They are in line with your essential Whoever-Created-You-Given sense of worthiness.

Examine your levels of self esteem as honestly as you can. Listen to your heart and your gut instincts to lead you to be honest with yourself. When you have an honest picture of where you may be lacking in the self esteem area, then you can proceed with specific techniques to assist you in bringing your self esteem to the level of authentic good feelings about yourself - from the inside out.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Once Upon a Time There Was Emotional Healing

Three Magic Secrets  to Emotional Healing

It is our job to change our own lives.  It cannot be left to other people or to the world around us. We cannot push our lives back until we have money, or feel secure in relationships. We have to start our emotional healing now.

Three Magic Secrets necessary to change your life:Magic Secret #1 - Life Is a School - Every newspaper and TV station and internet news are all freaking out about the economy, the environment, the politicians, etc. Well, that is their job as they see it. But our job is to ignore all that and remember Life Is a School. Why do we want to ignore it or at least not get too focused on it? Because our predominant state of being creates our reality and if our predominant state of being is some sort of freak out, then that's what we will create in our lives. Not only is Life Is a School on the individual level but the level of state, country, planet, Universe. We are here to learn. If everyone is freaking out, then we create more to be freaked out about. Like attracts like. And from that perspective we've done quite a good job of it. What I want to learn and I am suggesting you learn too, is how to be as authentically me as possible and how to change my attitude as quickly as possible which leads me to say that on both an individual and global level we all create a better world which is why I endorsed Obama. He seemed to supply hope to many people. It's a much happier attractor than fear will ever be - or at least we'll like the results more.

Magic Secret #2 - Friend In-Deed - Don't underestimate the impact of who you keep close to you  in your life on your attitude. If the people you hang out with are into positive change, it'll make it easier for you to be into it too.  If the people you hang out with are critical and complaining, guess what? That's the direction you will likely find yourself going in. If they focus on negativity and on the past and all that was wrong with it, remind them and yourself now is the time for change!

Magic Secret #3 - My Cup Runneth Over - Yup. Gratitude. The easiest way to activate the Law of Attraction in your direction, The easiest way to change your attitude and easily focus on now . Gratitude can open the door to your own emotional healing, let go of anger, and allow wonderful things to transpire in your life.

As my book says, "And with those Magic Secrets you too will discover how to find the sparkle, the light, the joy, find who you were when you were very first born." (page 35, Once Upon a Time There Was You: Three Magic Secrets for Finding Your Real Self .

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching 

Are You Judging Yourself? Find Self Acceptance

Self Acceptance by a Coach

In a world full opposites we seem to have trouble finding our own self acceptance. I was in the last couple of minutes with a coaching call and my client said she realized why she spent her life comparing herself to others. Her mother had compared her to others when she was a child and she learned it.

Learning to compare as a child makes perfect sense to me from two perspectives:

• First we have the human perspective - the perspective we hold here on planet earth. Here on planet earth it seems as if comparing is perfectly normal. We are always looking at good and bad , smaller and bigger , better and worse . We see things in duality. If there is one, the opposite is also true. So when my mother used to say, "Why aren't you like Renee (a goodie-two-shoes who was the older-than-I daughter of my mother's childhood friend)? It made me feel - bad! So if I was bad then somebody has to be good.  And so we spend our lives comparing ourselves to others.  But self acceptance can also be learned thus we have to apply it to our daily routine.

• Then we have the broad, spiritual perspective (and I might add, the real one). In that perspective there is only ONENESS. Whether you see it as a spiritual Intelligence, God or whatever, it's very nature is oneness. And since that implies that ALL is part of that, there is no duality, no good and bad, no smaller and bigger, no comparison. All is included in the ONE. We are all encompassing.  All of us are apart of one whole.

So, from the spiritual perspective there is nothing to compare because we are all part of the same thing. It is only an illusion. When you find yourself comparing yourself to someone else checking to see if they are richer, thinner or prettier or if you are, then you can realize that perspective is learned. Now you are in control of your own self acceptance.  Every time you catch yourself, you are closer and closer to full self acceptance.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Three Magic Secrets - the Movie

The First 37 Years - Covered in the Movie

I guess I've learned to make a story out of my life. This movie is the story of a part of my life. Making it into a story, has helped me learn what was good about the hard parts. Writing and producing it the way I did felt like giving birth to my 5th child. That child has taught me many things about life and myself. It is said, "from the mouth of babes".

The Fifth Child Is Born as We All Are - as a Result of Pain

Twelve years ago my husband and I found ourselves living in Las Vegas, a very unlikely place for someone who hates heat and always said she never would want to live there - me. Some people experience the results in their lives that have people saying to them, "Be careful what you wish for" but I seem to have to stay away from "I never..." kinds of statements because then they seem to happen.

So we had just gone through one of the hard parts in life. For 5 years we ran a workshop training company for John Gray, the Men Are from Mars guy and that company ended abruptly and kind of crazily. Many things changed in our lives including no longer being able to afford our lovely home in N. California. Fortunately, my husband was offered the job in Las Vegas and to Las Vegas we went.

So since I had to do something in Las Vegas out of the heat, I decided to see if I could write a book. It was a sometimes frustrating journey but I did it! I learned that I have creative talent that I had no idea I had.

The Fifth Child's Frustrating Years

I also had no idea how to market the book, so it sat in boxes in our house until along came the idea of making it into a Powerpoint presentation with movement and music.

That also took many, many months only to find out that Powerpoint files were really hard to show on the internet. Eventually I had it made into a flash movie which took a whole year long journey in itself and was fraught with much drama between me and the gentleman who was making it for me.

Meanwhile things got way better in our lives. We were back in Los Angeles, crazed and then uncrazed over the loss of all of our money but life kept improving as my husband found his fifth career at age 70, teaching high school Physics which he does until today, seven years later, and I am about to start training my thirteenth coach.

The Fifth Child Grows Up

Yesterday I was able to convert that flash movie that took a year to be done into a movie I can easily post anywhere from youtube to facebook or right here on my website. For that I am exceptionally grateful. At the same time in this my 70th year on the planet (I will have my 70th birthday on January 4, 2013) I am now known as the Wise Fairy God Mother and I finally believe it is the most appropriate title for this formerly very low self esteem woman, the Woman-Who-Was-the-Girl-Who-Was-the-Light. And I am grateful.

Note: If you want to find out who the Woman-Who-Was-the-Girl-Who-Was-the-Light and the Wise Fairy God Mother are, watch the movie. It's up there on the menu bar. It'll take you about 11 minutes and put your speakers on.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching  

Become a Life Coach

Is it a good fit?

To find out if you're cut out to become a life coach:

• Talk to other life coaches to see what the career entails.
• Take a course from a seasoned coach. There are many courses online.
• Hire a life coach you respect and trust and make part of your process the determination if life coaching is the career for you.

Many coaches believe life coaching is a calling. You really need to love helping other people and want to make a difference in people's lives. Coaching is a demanding career that has many benefits which include:

• You don't always need to meet face-to face with your clients; some you may never meet since coaching can be done over the phone, computer or live video. This allows you to work flexible hours from home without commuting and spend more time with your family.
• You don't have to pay the overhead of an office.
• It's a vehicle for you to continue to learn and grow in a supportive professional community of other coaches.

Many people go to coaching schools. Many people spend lots of money for training. Not that many actually end up doing it. In my way of looking at things there's nothing wrong with that. No learning, no experience is ever wasted. But if you want to be surer of your path, hire a coach, find some coaches to speak to and question or take an inexpensive preliminary course.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching  

The Biggest Reason Relationships Fail

I didn’t speak up but I was totally aware how I felt about him but right along with knowing that, were the many fears about how I look to the world with the star one being “nobody will want me”.

What I mean by “not telling the truth” is not telling the truth about my emotions and how I was feeling about him and in the relationship. Sometimes I’m just in denial about something but this I knew absolutely. If I was in denial about anything, it was that I was an attractive and acceptable woman.

There is the “sports, news and weather” kind of communication about jobs, kids, friends, family, colds, the news, etc. That is not what we are talking about here. What we are talking about here is the communication that happens between people in a relationship that starts out as “being in love” and can deteriorate into wanting to end the relationship or living in what feels like an armed camp or a monastery with no communication."

So the question might be, “If I’m feeling angry, should I just express it?” The answer is “yes” and “no”. If you just express it, it will only be part of what is true and will cause an argument or a shutdown in communication. If you don’t express it, you might end up with years of unexpressed emotion piling up and creating separation. The tool I will teach you will help you in both ways - to fully communicate and also prevent lack of connection.

I was taught, while on my journey of learning, how to have a relationship, to “tell the truth quickly”. I took that on as a if I were enrolled in a lifesaving course of study - which it has proven to be.

Anger covers over love with lots of different feelings in between. Anger is sort of the first emotion so that even if I feel afraid or sad in a situation, it is really because I am angry.

Did you ever watch a baby get angry over not getting what they want? As soon as they get it, they are all smiles again. They do it quickly and easily. We, however, have been socialized away from that. If I am 5 and want the red dress and get angry because I don’t get it, most parents and teachers tell us that “it isn’t nice” or “don’t do that” or “it is not ok to get angry at adults” or ...whatever you were told. And so being the smart little beings that we are and wanting to please our adults, we begin the comply and create habits of a lifetime.

This is the biggest reason why relationships fail.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching 

Feeling Joy

I got up this morning at my usual 4 a.m. Yes, that is quite early but it's become a routine fueled by age, sleep patterns and a desire for my husband and I to ease into our day leaving time for coffee and chat. Our chat most days is a dual attempt that serves two purposes. One is to keep us connected so that the busyness of life does not end up being friendly strangers in our own house and two is to give us time to work on what we're grateful for or some topic that will end up leaving us feeling grateful and ready to face our day in a positive way.

So today my day is just the usual - straighten house, shower, handle phone appointments, answer emails, exercise, work on my new course videos, work on my blog. All of this is quite usual. Some days I have clients. Some not. Some days I attend 12-Step meetings. Some not.

I guess our morning get-together worked because I am feeling free floating joy. I'm learning that if I allow the Universe it's timing, I need not fret or worry about anything. It all will come. I just have to do my part. And, hallelujah, that is very rarely hard any more.  There was a time that that was not true but all the trudging has really put me on the road to happy destiny.

You University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching