1. Articulate. Entertain the question “What would I love to be doing?”  Let yourself dream, make up, and start to tell stories that answer this lofty question.  Release all the “but” “wouldacouldashoulda’s” Just dream at this point.  Often times, we get stuck in everyday reality that doesn’t allow ourselves to even dream.
2. Become. So, you have articulated your dream.  Let go of the “some day, maybe” approach.  Start BEing your dream by answering this question, “How would someone BE who was living this dream?”  How does someone who is living this dream – your dream! – show up in life.
3. Choose. Choose to BE your Dream.  It’s in the act of creating your state of being that will allow you to lean into your dream – and become!  Day by Day. Moment by Moment.  When you start BEING the person in your dream.  You BECOME the person experiencing that DREAM – NOW!

I call living my dream – JUICY.  It’s a JUICY LIFE when you get to live out your dreams.  It’s ripe. It’s delicious.  It’s engaging and joy-filed!  That’s what Juicy is all about.  Here’s a worksheet for you to help clarify what your Juicy Life includes.  Get it. Do it. Live it.  Today!

Coaching is different than therapy.  Therapy focuses on the past and strives to answer the question “why.”  Whether you or I know an answer to why doesn’t necessarily change NOW.

Coaching on the other hand looks at “how?”  It’s also FUTURE focused.  Wrapping the HOW in the FUTURE creates inspiration. It creates action.  Action that produces results.

What you get:

• A future orientation
• A chance to unearth a Dream
• Specific, identifiable action steps that get you closer to your dream
• A partner in your accountabilities
• And someone who wants to see the best you have to offer yourself and the world
• The inspiration, nudge or kick towards helping you get what you want

Working with a coach you get to Design (yes, notice the choice of word here) a life worth living.  Something I love to call a Juicy Life.  It’s in that design phase goals are set.  Actions are identified.  And, yes…results start to occur.

So, what is it you’d love to be creating?

Working with a Coach helps you explore this question.  It’s not one that we regularly let ourselves entertain.  It’s one your coach persists on driving towards. It might be uncomfortable.  And when it is, you know your getting closer to the edge of a breakthrough.

Let me ask you these three questions:

• What is it that would be such a HUGE DEAL for you to accomplish or achieve?
• If you got that or achieved that, how would that make you feel? What might be different in your life as a result?
• How valuable would it be for you to achieve that?

(I’m guessing it would mean a lot to you, and be pretty valuable.)

So, if you could have a partner to help you get just that, what’s stopping you?

Experience Coaching today.  Many coaches will provide you a free sample session.  It’s a great way to experience what they have to offer, and it will give you a chance to taste what your Juicy Life has to offer.

A life that is best described:  Juicy?

Create Your Juicy Life is a practical, hands-on approach to creating just that – a life that is full, ripe and delicious!

For a limited time, I am offering the first section of this new book online to you FREE.  Simply complete the contact form with your name and email and I’ll gladly send it your way.  I can’t wait for you to start designing YOUR juicy life.

In this book, you will be provided with exercises to create your juicy life.  Take stock of your current reality – and then CHOOSE.  Notice. and Act.

This book is great if you are feeling stuck, need a nudge, or just want to experience more joy in your life.

If you could get more JOY in your life – what might that be like?  Well, now you have some practical tools to use to answer the question – and EXPERIENCE the answer.

It’s one that is full of energy and emotion, ideas and challenge, and it’s one in which we have decided to live with both feet in.  You know, some people approach the pool and dip a toe in – testing the waters of sorts.  I’ve seen very few people actually take the plunge after just testing it with a big toe.  It seems like the water is always too cold and there is something better to be doing than getting in a cold pool.   Now, the two feet in approach usually starts with a run or leap and blop – two feet in, followed by your entire body.  Shocking. Freezing. Invigorating.

And you spring to life! You soon realize, maybe it’s not as cold as you thought and you hang out a bit.  Or realize how refreshing and reinvigorating taking the plunge really was.  You’ve woken up!  A juicy life is one where you’re awake – free to choose, free to be, and free to take the plunge.

We are currently offering a NEW CLIENT program that includes 3-months of coaching, action and results.  Do you have something you’d like to achieve?  Just haven’t gotten to it yet?   A Coach helps you see results and develop skills to create your JUICY life.

Complete our contact form for a FREE worksheet and more information and you too can start living the Juicy Life.

1. Clarity. Being able to set you aim and focus on something specific helps you to achieve your result.  The more specific, the more likely you are to be successful with achieving your result.  First, What do you want? Get yourself really clear on what this is.  A deeper question that might be helpful to explore is Why do I want it?
2. Chunk it down. Now, I don’t need any study to show me that being able to take bite sized bites of something is easier to swallow than taking one large bite.  When a project is too big, too hairy, to scary – I don’t do anything.  Chunk your goal down into bite sized pieces.  What are you doing every day that gets you closer to your goal?
3. Action. To achieve your results, there needs to be action not just thoughts, not just “try’s”  (i.e. I’m going to try to do it) – but deliberate actions.  What are you doing?

Use the 2Day 2Achieve Worksheet to move you closer to your goal.  Action by action, day by day you will start to see what you are doing to create your own success. You can use this form at the beginning of each day to plan out what actions you will take.  Or, you can use the form at the end of the day and reflect on what two actions did you take today?  Either way you can’t go wrong when you are using this tool.

Just 2 a day.  What do you choose?

More importantly, what are you getting from the actions you’ve taken?

The Story.  Yep, the story.

I’ve been to a number of different personal development sessions where this concept comes out – Landmark Education, Coaching Certification, and the book Language and the pursuit of happiness.  This concept of story is something very powerful when you can just stand with it.  Live with it. Own it.  And then get to choose – how is it serving me?

Think about that relationship in your life where you might benefit from a deeper connection.  Maybe it’s your brother, you boss or barista at your favorite coffee shop.  What’s the story you have about that relationship?

Once you’ve become aware of the story that you have – get yourself clear about what it truly is. What if the story was written a different way?  (your brain might shift to autopilot and convince yourself it’s can’t possibly be another way than it currently is today, or it’s not possible to change – because they aren’t going to change!)  As a coach, I’m not really interesting in spending the time and energy around why it can’t change – I’m interested in “if you want the story to change, what can you do to rewrite it?”  Here’s how:

1. Create the story you want to live in.  What is the story that would make you jump for joy, throw your hands up, pee your pants because – holy crap, I never knew it could be that good.  Describe that story.  Write it down.  What is the story you want to create?
2. If you got to live in that story – what would be different for you? What does this story sound like? look like? smell like?  What does this story evoke in your heart, head and soul? (write down a few notes about this)
3. And if you had that, what would you have? It might be a fuller relationships, a sense of letting go, peace, harmony…what else might it be for you?
4. Move to action to live in this story.  Identify 25 things YOU will do to show up in a way that lives this new story. (BTW this list is about you, not the other person)

Doing this simple exercise to repair, renew, revive a relationship in your life might have a profound impact.  I don’t know if it ends happily ever after.  I just know today might be uniquely different from days in the story of the past.

What’s it worth to you to see how you can rewrite the stories of your life  - or better yet, what are you risking if you don’t?

I believe this video teaches us two important lessons on engagement.  Take a look what do you see that relates to engagement here?

1. Provide clear direction.  This was accomplished through rehearsal and practice, by the some 20,000 who chose to participate in kicking off Oprah’s 24th season.  When people are provided a clear sense of direction it’s amazing what can be accomplished.  In the workplace or on the streets in Chicago.
2. Co-create with your group.  This one I think is the biggest lesson.  After viewing an interview with the director of the video, it was clear that the Black Eyed Peas put ego aside to co-create.  In a typical rock concert the spot light is on the stage.  Here the spot light extends all the way down Michigan Ave.  They let the audience in.  They let the audience be part of the show.  Takes a confident leader to allow this, don’t you think?

Research from the Corporate Leadership Council suggests that by simply providing a clear direction to the goals of the organization can yield an increase in up to 34% in effort.  What do you think the impact to engagement is when people get to be part of the “show” and co-create with their leaders?

The Three Laws of Performance by Zaffron & Logan

I’ve recently finished The Three Laws of Performance and give it a huge standing O!. This is a book based on personal accountability, commitment and moreover – ACTION! Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan give us a simple framework to live towards.  A framework full of action, commitment and results.  Read this book only if you want true transformation.  

As a consultant working with groups and individuals seeking results, the concept of “not fixing anything” was a bit a challenge to get my head around.  However, as they explain, this mindset creates a some-day future that is never really attained.  We aren’t broke. Our organizations don’t need to be fixed.  What we truly need is to understand our comfort of living a “default future.”  This is the future that is going to occur if we continue doing the same things that have gotten us to this point.  We must DO something different. And it doesn’t involve fixing anything.  Puzzled?  Let’s keep going.

Here are the 3 Laws we must understand:

1. How people perform correlates to how situations occur to them.
2. How a situation occurs arises in language.
3. Future based language transforms how situations occur to people. 

from the Appendix in The Three Laws of Performance, Zaffron & Logan

The book shares some great stories where it might occur to you, or I, that true transformation had no chance for success. A Japanese business where the founder sudden dies, a mining town in Africa, and a fledgeling shoe company that took on Nike. These stories are true examples of transformation – they are gifts of inspiration.  If an organization or a community can practice these laws then surely I too should be able to practice them. 

The next couple days posts, I want to write about a couple of my own personal examples where practicing these three laws have created a new way of being, it’s created a different way in which the world occurs. And maybe more importantly, it’s created results!

Is there something in your life that you’re willing to put at stake and create something other than the “default future”?

Fully engaged is measured by contributions on two levels – Organizational and Individual success. The organization has values, goals and strategies in place for success. These are factors they are looking to maximize. You and I, as individuals also have our own version of this. Together, great organizations can maximize these and create the apex of true engagement – one where the organization and individual reap the benefits.

Organizations must not be doing a good job at this, if they were, surely there would be more engagement. Or, might it be, we as individuals aren’t doing a good enough of this area for ourselves? Probably a deadly combination of the two.

Well, let’s first focus on what we control—OURSELVES.

To increase your own level of engagement at work (or in life for that matter!) ask yourself these three questions:

• How does the work you contribute roll up to the overall mission of the organization?
• What really excites you, or brings you joy, about the work that you are doing?
• How might you go about creating “more of” this to connect fully to this organization’s mission?

In these answers lie the success – or lack thereof – towards becoming more fully engaged.  One of the things I’ve enjoyed recently is working with individuals and teams to help sort out the number of answers to these questions.  The goal – becoming more engaged myself and creating organizations that foster engagement.

The true benefit is when you wake each day and know how and why you contribute we can improve not only our satisfaction, but our performance. Up for the challenge?

After some initial conversation, the questions started to fly.  

Yeah, but…I tried that before and it’s not going to work, what should I do?

They’re a jerk – and of course they are going to act the same way, what should I do?

I tend to be simple in my approach on this one…do  YOU want to change the way in which you have conversations with this person? It’s a very simple YES or NO.  No explanation is needed.  I just need to know if you want to or not.  If you’re interested – then we have one conversation.  If you’re not interested, we have a different kind of conversation.

This is the JUICY part!

Engaging someone in a way where it’s clear there is going to be some responsibility to move things forward is what I am about.  It comes out in a number of ways in the workshops I facilitate.  

This commitment to action – really doing something – is what’s needed if we truly expect anything to be different. Since I’ve only figured out how to change the way I approach things – and can’t change the way others approach it.  I choose to start there.

Where do you choose to start?