Abstract:

The answer to the question is “yes”.  We learn about ourselves and our community from both and from questioning why we do both.

[about 7 minutes]

—

—

If you have any questions about coaching please feel free to contact me at scott@kineticcoaching.co, and remember I always offer a complimentary 30-45 minute session to prospective clients to determine if we want to work together.

Many clients ask me to help them make “better decisions.”  Of course for many of us the path to making better decisions is often bumpy and winding.  However, if you start by following these three steps you will quickly see how your life will change for the better.

Step 1:  How are you making decisions now?

Here are the popular answers I hear:

1. “Based on how I handled a similar situation in the past.”

2. “Based on what is best for my family/partner/other people.”

3. Most popular: “I don’t know.”

Here are the two answers we rarely suggest but are probably in play more than we would like to acknowledge:

1. Based on fear.

2. Based on anger/sadness.

None of the above will help you consistently flourish.  And the most popular truthful answers, fear, anger/sadness, and “I don’t know” are no way to live a life.

Step 2: What are values and why do they matter?

Live your life by what you value.  Seems simple enough.  The problem is there are numerous definitions of a value.  Try this simple value filter: If the word makes your heart sing it is probably a value.  My clients go through an intensive and comprehensive values assessment to determine the words that make their heart sing.  It only takes about an hour, and the results are compelling.

Once you begin to experiment with making decisions based on what you value you suddenly reduce unnecessary drama in your life, you stop worrying every time you are asked to choose, and you begin to navigate the forks in the road to success with speed and confidence.

Step 3: The words are not enough

My values are community, opportunity, commitment, and love.  These are wonderful words, for me.  However, when I am faced with a decision, how can these words help me to make a good one?  Well they can, most of the time.  For example, if I have a choice between trying something new in my business and relying on the tried and true, I am more likely to experiment because it speaks to my value of opportunity.  I love to seize an opportunity.

But what happens when I have to choose between my commitment to my clients and my commitment to my friends?  Commitment is a value and this choice seems to produce conflicting value allegiances.  I am clearly committed to both my friends and clients, and both are part of my community (another value), and frankly I love them too (yet another value).

So Step 3 is about creating your own valued purpose statement.  This statement fleshes out what you mean by your words and reduces values conflicts.  A valued purpose embodies your values, although the statement may not contain any of the words.

My valued purpose statement is:  Bold and consistent experimentation in the spirit of well-being (I define well-being using an acronym called PERMA, a construct used in positive psychology, where each letter stands for an element of emotional health).

Back to my choice between clients and friends . . .

The simple answer is it depends . . . There is never a 100 percent clear choice if you are conflicted.  You would not be conflicted otherwise.  So I ask myself, “As of right now, what decision would be more likely to lead me down a path of bold and consistent experimentation in the spirit of PERMA?”

Then I make the decision and move on.  It’s not a perfect system for we are not computers.  Notice though how fear, anger, and “I don’t know” are stricken from the process.  This realization is revolutionary for most people.

—

If you have any questions about coaching please feel free to contact me at scott@kineticcoaching.co, and remember I always offer a complimentary 30-45 minute session to prospective clients to determine if we want to work together.

Abstract:

At what point are you truly over an ex?  When you can pass the “knock on the door test” . . .

[about 10 minutes]

—

—

If you have any questions about coaching please feel free to contact me at scott@kineticcoaching.co, and remember I always offer a complimentary 30-45 minute session to prospective clients to determine if we want to work together.

Abstract:

Whatever you decide you want to achieve, stay open to making adjustments at the beginning, the middle, and at the end of your goal process.  Time is finite, instead of wasting it, adjust to it!

[about 10 minutes]

—

—

If you have any questions about coaching please feel free to contact me at scott@kineticcoaching.co, and remember I always offer a complimentary 30-45 minute session to prospective clients to determine if we want to work together.

Recently I completed a blog series on the ten reasons why coaches fail at a full-time career.  I appreciate the emails from readers who have been affected by my point of view.

One of those emails asked, “Why did you become a coach in the first place?”

If you read my blogs consistently (and thanks for doing that), you will find answers like, “I love to help people reach their goals,” and “I love to do well by doing good,” etc.

And then I thought that I have never really answered this question in a way that explains my passion for coaching and how I believe it is the best modality for changing lives and creating flourishing businesses.

Most importantly, I have never recounted my personal coaching journey.

My Coaching Story

Several years ago I experienced a great deal of pain after a breakup I frankly did not see coming.  I experienced lows I never thought possible.  It eclipsed the pain I felt when my parents divorced, when my charismatic and loving mom passed away in my early 20s, and when my very dear grandmother died a few years after that.

I did not know what to do or where to turn.  To make matters much worse I was living a frenetic life at the time, stuck on the treadmill of achievement without any focus on my overall health and well-being.  I lived to work and for my partner and most aspects of the work I was doing were not particularly rewarding.

And so when my post-breakup sadness became overwhelming I went to see a therapist.  I had no idea finding a good therapist was as hard as finding a soul mate!  Her “this is the likely disorder you suffer from” vantage point turned my stomach and whisked me farther down my sad spiral.

Next I tried group therapy.  I figured I had nothing to lose.  I thought perhaps I was “broken” and being with other “broken” people might help me find some answers.

In the room were twelve people who used the sessions to complain about every problem that brought them to the brink of disaster.  Now I get why people vent.  However, research shows that venting for the sake of venting is unhelpful.  We must seek to reappraise the past experience and our present lives in an effort to learn and grow from it.

And our group therapy facilitator did not hold people accountable for their own well-being.  In short, no one was taking responsibility for anything.  I got up, and asked myself, “When is it the right time to stop blaming others for our pain?”

Right now.

Soon after the pain lifted (with the help of a wonderful therapist) I began my journey of emotional and physical health and healing.

My future seemed nebulous and a bit scary at first.  But I knew my new life would involve both consistent responsibility and consistent experimentation and I wanted to share that ethic with others.

And when I had lunch one day with a former student of mine (way back when, I taught the social sciences), she reminded me how my classes were much more concerned with the personal and professional development of my students than in the nitty gritty details of the subject matter.

She asked me if I ever considered coaching?  Coaching?  You mean like football? I really had no idea such a field existed.

So I learned everything I could about life and business coaching, got certified and started seeing clients immediately.  Let me be clear, it was not love at first sight, but I soon realized I was born to coach . . . it just took me forty years to realize it.

And the best part?  The unintended consequence of my heartache and employment crisis was this introduction to my life’s work.  Don’t you just love positive unintended consequences?

I am a coach because I believe in helping clients see what is right in their lives.  I am a coach because I love to help clients formulate a roadmap for their success that ensures goals are met while emotional and physical well-being are both enhanced.  I am a coach to encourage clients to take responsibility for their own lives.  And finally, I am a coach who motivates clients to live a life of healthy experimentation.

It’s my passion and thanks to my amazing clients I get to make a living doing what I love.  Thanks!

Interested in coaching?  Check out this blog series to determine if coaching is right for you . . .

Coaching is Right for You If . . . You are Not Depressed, Too Busy, or Into Instant Gratification

Coaching is Right for You If . . . Life is Not What You Imagined

Coaching is Right for You If . . . You Want to Start Something

Coaching is Right for You If . . . You Want to End Something

Coaching is Right for You If . . . You are in the Thick of It

Coaching is Right for You If . . . Goals Matter

Coaching is Right for You If . . . You Want to Practice Happiness

Coaching is Right for You If . . . You Want Health

Coaching is Right for You If . . . You Want to Play to Your Strengths

Coaching is Right for You If . . . You are Making Stupid Decisions Part I

Coaching is Right for You If . . . You are Making Stupid Decisions Part II

—

If you have any questions about coaching please feel free to contact me at scott@kineticcoaching.co, and remember I always offer a complimentary 30-45 minute session to prospective clients to determine if we want to work together.

Abstract:

An audio blogpost about feelings and how sometimes not feeling like yourself is both explainable and unexplainable.  Feelings pass, “good” ones and “bad” ones . . . just don’t let the frustrating ones stop you from seeking meaning in your life, and in the life of others today . . . and beyond. [about 13 minutes]

—

—

If you have any questions about coaching please feel free to contact me at scott@kineticcoaching.co, and remember I always offer a complimentary 30-45 minute session to prospective clients to determine if we want to work together.

This post from 2015 about the Charleston Church racist murders demonstrates how treating life like a science experiment can teach us lessons about some of the most unconscious bigoted behaviors, our own . . . my own.  This current moment in our history is tumultuous, and necessary for all of us.  We must learn and grow . . . finally!

—

(audio version available at the end of this post)

Let me share a recent interaction I had to illustrate the difference between a thought, a belief, and an action predicated on a belief.

It was about four weeks ago and I was walking through a park. Two black teenage boys approached me.  They appeared lost to me.  One asked me where a certain Capitol Hill school was located.  I told him I did not know but that I could look it up on my iPhone.  As I pulled the phone out of my front pocket I thought, “What if this is a scheme to steal my phone?”  In any event I gave them the directions and off they went.  I could have stopped there with my seemingly innocuous thought.  No growth, no learning.

Instead this was my next thought . . .

If they had been white would I have ever suspected a scheme?

Probably not.

Thoughts, Beliefs, and Actions

So why is a business and life coach writing about his relationship with race?

Because our thoughts have enormous power if we afford them that power . . . all thoughts. And yet thoughts have no hold over us if we disregard or challenge them in our effort to evolve and grow.  As a fascinating book by a duo of psychologists argues, you and your thoughts are not one in the same.

But when we choose to incorporate a series of seemingly connected thoughts about a particular topic/subject with the “lessons” shared with us by family, friends, mentors, books (the internet), etc., on that topic/subject, then poof . . .  we usually end up with a belief.  And beliefs often spur action.

Undoubtedly our beliefs and actions go a long way in defining who we are.

Beliefs can be as helpful as “I treat all people equally and interact with them from a posture of curiosity and non-judgment,” as sensible as “I better seek shelter when there is lightening nearby,” or as harmful as “the darker a person’s skin the more suspicious I must be because they are out to get me (or my family, or my country, or my ‘way of life’).”

And in fact the vast majority of time our beliefs are somewhat coherent, congruent, scientific, and virtuous because they are based upon the empirical evidence of our everyday lives.  For example, most people are helpful is a belief I subscribe to since I have found in my life, after living in five countries and nine cities, that when I need help, people are usually there for me if I ask for it.

What am I arguing here?

We can have beliefs that range from the virtuous to the vicious.

The good news is we can create a pious bias toward the virtuous if we are open to self-examination to discern why our thoughts emerge the way in which they do, no matter how uncomfortable our findings are to us or to our community.

My suspicious thoughts related to the two teenagers described above I find illogical and anti-empirical.  No one of any race has ever stolen my phone, and even if they had they would not represent a random sample of their race, age cohort, or gender.

Accordingly my mistrustful thought in the park does not contribute to my beliefs about race nor does it control my actions, and therefore it did not prevent me from acting virtuously this time, thank goodness.

Virtue requires consistent vigilance however and I have come up short many times in my life . . . many.

When I was a teenager, for instance, my stepmother shared a story of how her grandfather was killed protecting his convenience store from black burglars. “That is why you should never trust a ni**er,” she exclaimed. And if those robbers had been white, should I never trust a white man?

God how I wish I responded that way. I did not, choosing cowardice instead.

The Charleston Church Murders

Can this thought-belief-action dynamic help us process (not justify) the horrific actions of Dylann Roof, the murderer of nine innocent churchgoers in Charleston? Now, he may in fact be “nuts”.  But I caution using words like “nuts” or “crazy” because it may get him and his influencers off the hook.

Roof holds a vicious belief about race, one that requires a series of foundational thoughts. For instance . . .

1) Black people are different (who and/or what influenced him to have that thought?).

2) That difference is dangerous to me and my community (who and/or what influenced him to have that thought?).

3) So I must act to stop them (who and/or what influenced him to have that thought?).

4) The only way I can do that is to kill them (who and/or what influenced him to have that thought?).

In the weeks and months ahead the “who and/or what” is worth exploring even if we uncover troubling truths.

We all have racial thoughts (making assumptions entirely based on the color of someone’s skin).  The good news is the overwhelming majority is not racist, i.e. we never use them to formulate vicious beliefs that may contribute to violent actions or the condoning of such actions.

Most of us probably disregard those thoughts.

Some of us even take the next helpful step, one that requires time carefully spent assessing where these thoughts come from and why they appear in the first place: perhaps our families, friends, the internet, our churches, our clubs, etc., are explanatory elements that we can choose to consider and critique.

This effort to bias in favor of virtue is such an inclusive human enterprise.

And racism is the opposite of inclusive . . .  it’s ignorant and unscientific (the two go hand-in-hand). [2020 note: as we have sadly seen, practically hourly, in our presidential discourse since January 20th 2017 from noon onwards . . . oh how I wish I attended Hogwarts so I could learn a spell to mute a vile man.]

It is Black and White

Racism is a heinous vice, forged in the thoughts, beliefs, and actions that come from many places and people.  And do not think for a moment that any one of us is incapable of thoughts that have the potential to lead to vicious beliefs.  To paraphrase a famous scholar, evil is banal.

Roof’s actions must remind us that we are all capable of damaging vice to varying degrees if  1) we refuse to take the time to question and challenge the vicious thoughts that enter our minds each and every day and when 2) we refuse to take the time and energy to challenge the vicious beliefs and actions of other people.

I hope, in truth, we have evolved as a species more than it seems lately in the USA (a species ironically that originated in Africa).  I mean, come on, I suspect our black ancestors are not particularly proud of us right now.

My covid vaccine experience.

—

Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels

In early April 2021 I drove 2.5 hours to a remote county somewhere in Maryland I had never heard of to receive my first covid vaccination.  I waited about two hours in several lines, carefully organized by national guard troops and nurses and supervisors.  It was an immense operation, and although all 45 individual “shot in the arm” stations were not utilized that day, I could not believe how professional and patient everyone was behaving.

Perhaps after four years of Pleistocene Epoch politics I had lost some hope that we could ever accomplish much as a nation again.

As I sat waiting for my 15 minutes to expire (for those unvaccinated, they ask you to wait just in case you have a reaction to the vaccine), I gave myself permission to be happy, to breathe a sigh of relief.  Pleased that in three weeks time I would return to this same place for my second dose of this wonderful new technology that will save millions now and perhaps billions later. (For those who read books, check out Walter Isaacson’s The Code Breaker to learn more about the science.)

And when I returned . . . omg, America can innovate!

Instead of waiting two hours, it took 5 minutes.  I am not kidding, five minutes from the time I parked to the time the nurse gave me my second dose.  FIVE MINUTES!

I am not some rah rah rah, “America is number 1 kinda guy”.  I certainly grew up that way, part of an immigrant family proud to call America home, people who felt and feel American and Italian . . . both, and with not a hint of a conflict of interest, thank you very much.

I left my country at the age of 20 and spent ten of the next twenty years living in a variety of other nations.  I loved all of them.  They each had a unique culture to learn from and I enjoyed comparing and contrasting their “ways” with ours.  The one common feature I missed in all those places . . . our love of making something better, of not accepting that just because it was always done one way, it must always remain that way.  As a totally gay and out man, I am living proof that America gets better in fits and starts.  Too late for many, yes I know, I am one of the lucky ones.

But I digress . . .

After the nurse carefully places the bandaid on my shoulder (for the unvaccinated and wary, I HATE needles, I grew up with a crunchy 1970s mom who never took me to doctors, but this one must be super thin cause it felt no worse than the mildest of pinches), I began to walk to the 15-minute waiting area.  Then . . . tears flowed.  Like a baby, and I have been told I cried a Pacific Ocean worth of tears in my first 3 years on Earth!

And this is what I texted a good friend when she asked me to describe what I felt as I released so much emotion . . .

“I wept after my second shot, I wept for all the people who died of AIDS who may have lived if we had put in this effort for HIV, I wept for how amazing tech is at solving serious problems, how government matters, how this past year not only ripped a hole in my country I love so very much but also directly into my family. I cried tears of joy; I felt a sense of freedom to see all my friends and colleagues in DC . . . I wept and wept and wept.  I felt every positive and negative emotion available to me in 50 years in just 15 minutes, what a trip!”

Wars and pandemics change cultures faster than probably any other phenomena.  How has it changed you?  If you say it has not . . . welcome to DENIAL.  What do you plan to do with all the knowledge, all the fear, all the change?  Go back to the way you once lived?  Come on!  Create a better version of yourself, one that focuses on all of your strengths, one that reevaluates your values, and one that makes life worth living from today . . . not tomorrow, not after this summer, and not in 2022 . . . NOW!

—

If you have any questions about coaching please feel free to contact me at scott@kineticcoaching.co, and remember I always offer a complimentary 30-45 minute session to prospective clients to determine if we want to work together.

But make no mistake, that is exactly what an abusive leader when faced with an opponent who wants to follow a set of rules and norms wants you to think.  A total sh*tshow.  He hopes the blame will be apportioned equally.  Perhaps the only concept of equality Trump understands.

Trump is diabolical.

Trump entered the debate with a plan, so stop thinking he is demented and crazy, living life off the cuff.

“At least he is authentic.”  I have heard that many times.  The best indictment frankly of our “just be your authentic self” 21st century.

If he makes us angry and makes us feel uneasy, or frankly makes us want to vomit . . . that’s the goal, the point.

The powerful abhor the power vacuum, they literally use up all the oxygen in the room for fear of losing control no matter how nuts the process seems.  Or how nuts it makes us feel.

Trump is an abuser.

Anyone who has faced an abuser knows this to be true.  It is why we hate to admit he is scary af.

He makes us question our own sanity.  But no one is crazy here, not him, not you.   The abuser creates the very conditions of mayhem we deplore yet then claims to have all the solutions.

One of my favorite American thinkers of the 20th century is Abraham Maslow.  He reminds us in a brilliant new book by Scott Barry Kaufman . . .

“The average child and, less obviously, the average adult in our society generally prefers a safe, orderly, predictable, lawful, organized world which [they] can count on and in which unexpected, unmanageable, chaotic, or other dangerous things do not happen, and in which, in any case, [they] have powerful parents or protectors [italics mine] who shield them from harm.”

Worth repeating: Abusers manifest and foster harm then tell us they can fix it.  We laughed when he told us in 2016 that he alone can fix it.  Not so funny now.

Trump is a bully.

My mother would often remind her precocious and impatient son that kindness is harder than anger, harder than judgment, harder than forgiveness, harder than just about any other human choice . . . yet so many people choose kindness because it works!  Good-will rooted in kind acts creates exponential growth for all.  It is best for all.  Bullies are best for them.

Trump is a manipulator.

Go ahead and blame others for your failures, blame it all on them, whomever they may be.  Easy right?  Lazy too especially when born into a privileged race, gender, orientation or religious faith.

Trump is a liar.

All the time, period. No! George Costanza is wrong, it is still a lie even if you believe it to be true.

Don’t you dare play the “lesser of two evils card” here.  Politics is about the possible; at its best it is about the pursuit of a better world for all, and a candid acknowledgment of failures in the past and present.

You see, I have abused, I have bullied, I have manipulated, and I have lied . . . recently too!  Let’s call these my bizarro-strengths, and unlike my actual strengths, my bizarro ones are rooted in fear and anger, not virtue.  In 2020 there is so much to fear.  So easy to exploit it too.

Yet I have seen countless examples of people stepping it up this year.  Fearful yes, but in spite of the fear choosing to help, to listen, to engage with an open heart . . . to act for the greater good.  These people make me a better man.  Average folks are inspiring when we look for them when not staring at our phones.

I coach and counsel clients every single day who are interested in making better choices for themselves and their families, teams, and communities.  I rarely prescribe though.

But I will now . . . donate money, donate time, and vote, and then look in the mirror and learn from this archetype of vice we elected in 2016.

We created him, he is the George Wallace of our age, just one who is now totally out of the closet (cloak?) beyond the boundaries of the Confederate 11.  I had a prescient professor in 1990 ask me to read a little known book then (or now) called “Amusing Ourselves to Death”.  Boy did we ever in those intervening 30 years.  Look at all we missed. Right under my nose, ugh.  It stinks!

If you say, “omg we are headed for a dictatorship, how will we survive it?”  Read about the women (RBG perhaps) who fought and are fighting for equality, Black people (perhaps John Lewis) in the South before the 1960s and until now (and not just in the South to be candid) rejecting bigotry, LGBTQ people (perhaps, Larry Kramer) in most places and in most time periods wanting the freedom to be exactly who they were meant to be.

The three leaders mentioned above all died in 2020.  They would be angry with us if we mourned and then did nothing.  RBG would probably not even want the mourning!

Hope is not enough, stop wishing.  Get to work.  We are the panacea we seek.  Will it be clean and concise and perfect?  Not even close.  Not a panacea in fact.  The good news is he set the bar so so so low.  So low that hundreds of thousands of people will be too sick or dead to vote on November 3rd.

Raise that bar!

In Part I we introduced the term value. Values are concepts we hold dear, they make our hearts sing, and they should guide us when we make decisions each day.  But they only matter if we first identify them, then define them, and then choose to make decisions based upon them.

Part I also taught us that our parents’ values are often not ours.  If we mindlessly make decisions based on what we were told decades ago, we invariably make stupid choices.

Now Part II takes us from past to present.

An Experiment

First, let’s make the assumption that you know your values and you can clearly define them (and on the spot).  Mine are (and recently I have created phrases instead of words . . . just call it advanced value work):  1) promote balanced experimentation, 2) discover the win-win else move on, 3) pursue emotional and physical well-being.

Second, jot down the last two to three significant decisions you made, personal or professional.  We are talking significant here, not necessarily monumental.

For instance, last week I decided to plan a trip right before the holidays to help a client.  Also, I decided that while my husband is travelling in Asia this month, I would turn in earlier each evening since that is the time I miss him most acutely.

Third, bullet-point the reasons why you made your decisions.

For my first, traveling to a client before the holidays, I made the decision because . . .

1. I have never helped a client in this way before. (My first value)

2. She is a trusted and excellent client. (My second value)

3. It will be fun, exciting, and connecting. (My second and third value)

Great!  This is clearly a value-aligned decision.

For my second, hitting the hay earlier each night while the hubbie is away, I made this decision because . . .

1. I want to try a new way to miss him less. (My first value)

2. I do not want to get too sad, it may hurt my relationship. (My second value)

3. Waking up early (and earlier) is easy for me and I am naturally happier in the morning. (My third value)

Another value aligned decision.  And also this decision mitigates my fear, the fear of loneliness.

Why is this important?

The Power of Fear and Anger

Because we make terribly poor and stupid decisions when we are fearful and/or angry (and anger is often just a way we cope with fear).  And no one, when fearful or angry, has made more stupid and value unaligned decisions in his life than I have.

However, now I have the awareness and the tools at my disposal to prevent most of them.  (And trust me, experimenting with the difference between alone and loneliness is some further work I want to do.)

If you are honest I bet fear or anger played a significant role in one or more of your recent decision: Fear of failure, of looking stupid, of perceived laziness, or of incompetence.  Or anger at a colleague/friend, at yourself, or at a family member.

Fear and anger contribute as much to our stupid decisions as mindlessly following platitudes prescribed by our parents in our youth.  The more fearful and the angrier we are, the more we sabotage our success.

We will never eliminate all the sadness and anger in our lives, nor should we, but we can prevent ourselves from making decisions rooted in sadness and anger that have the potential to damage us and our community.

—

If you have any questions about coaching please feel free to contact me at scott@kineticcoaching.co, and remember I always offer a complimentary 30-45 minute session to prospective clients to determine if we want to work together.