The Reason Nothing Happens ... is because nothing is happening!Written by Edward B. Toupin
I hear many clients declare how boring and stagnant their lives have become. As they disclose their concerns, answer usually bubbles near surface, but never quite makes it to top. However, after a few minutes, I usually ask, "What are you doing to re-energize your life?" The most common answer is, "I dunno what to do!" Ah, answer to problem in itself!Life becomes stagnant for varying reasons; however, most causes include 1) forgetting how to re-motivate oneself and 2) waiting for next "thing." In both cases, it's a matter of fast-idling in a comfort zone in hopes that something better will come along. However, while you wait and hope for best, opportunities are passing by because you are not open to having them in your life. --- Re-Motivation --- Motivation is tough. It requires an objective, a plan, and a reason. If any of these items are missing, then reason for pursuit of a dream disappears. We sometimes become so stuck on a way of life, or a direction, that when we encounter a loss of any type, resulting change causes us to stall. Life, as we once knew it, is over. This, because we've been so focused on a given path that any sudden changes knocks us off balance. But, end of one way of life is indeed beginning of a new life altogether! In such cases, we have forgotten how to motivate ourselves and decide that it's easier to idle with imitation projects in a comfort zone to fill our voids as opposed to breaking out and chasing a dream. We work hard to stay where we are by devising busy-work to occupy our minds that then become excuses for us to remain stationary. However, re-motivation is a necessary part of life management as it allows us to adapt to changes (i.e., success, loss, and trauma at end of a cycle or period of extremes) that can affect our lives. --- Just Waiting Around --- "Waiting around" is a situation that we all encounter from time-to-time. We just "wait", for any number of reasons, including fear and "holding out for something better." In interim, our minds run amok and we stall at top of a downward spiral.
| | Wny Work with a CERTIFIED Emotional Intelligence Coach?Written by Susan Dunn, MA, Director, EQ Alive!, certification for EQ coaches
Yes, Emotional Intelligence has been called “white hot” by press, and you’ve probably been hearing about it lately. In fact when Harvard Business Review published an article about Emotional Intelligence in 1998, more readers read article than any other article published in HBR in past 40 years. According to Gary Cherniss, Ph.D., Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, Rutgers University, in an article entitled, “Emotional Intelligence: What It Is and Why It Matters,” “when CEO of Johnson & Johnson read that article, he was so impressed that he had copies sent out to 400 top executives in company worldwide.”However, Emotional Intelligence is far from a fad or business buzz word. It’s a field of study that developed to fill gaps in what lay people like you and me, and experts alike observed: that success and happiness in life (career and relationships) has more to do with emotions than thinking, and that IQ alone is not most important factor. Highly credentialed researchers have worked in field to define what Emotional Intelligence is (and is not), and to come up with ways to describe it and break it down into qualities, competencies or skills that can be learned. The work may have begun in 1983, when Howard Gardner, who proposed that “interpersonal” and “intrapersonal” intelligences (part of his theory of multiple intelligences) were as important as type of cognitive, intellectual intelligence measured by IQ tests at time. Other names in field you will recognize are Mayer, Salovey, Goleman, Seligman, Caruso, Siebert, Cooper and Cherniss. Whereas coaching credentials, or no credentials, may be adequate for some coaching specialties, because of complexity of field of Emotional Intelligence, and its interface with psychology, it’s important coach be specially certified in that specialty. An example? Emotional Intelligence coaching deals with emotions, and so does psychology, and EQ coach must know where line is drawn between coaching and therapy. Can you, for instance, teach someone learned optimism if they are clinically depressed, and how do you know difference? How do you teach resilience, which has to do with past traumas, losses and setbacks, without going into emotions of past, which would be therapy?
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