I recently read in the LA Times that thirty-three years after being classified as an endangered species, the El Segundo blue butterfly, long since having left its disrupted habitat, is now back.  It’s population is growing, despite noise and pollution, in the sandy dunes next to the Los Angeles airport.  Perhaps it learned something about

Interruptions and Adaptability—

I was recently considered for coaching work in a consulting firm. The firm’s clients were all attorneys and I had some early experience working for and later coaching attorneys.  After a a new Nordstrom suit purchased for my interview, a preliminary interview, and three weeks of deliberation, the firm decided to consider two attorney candidates who also coach.  Perhaps a better fit for their needs, yet if their job role definition had been clear in the beginning, I would not have pursued this offer.  Despite this annoyance, I drew on my familiarity with

Interruptions and Adaptability—

There are times like these when your normal course of action is interrupted to pursue an opportunity, only to come out the other end realizing that it simply isn’t going to happen or, in my case, the direction I was pursuing wasn’t going to take me where I wanted to go anyway.  Of course it’s easier if you can figure this out in advance of taking unnecessary steps, but it’s not always easy to do that.

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Have you ever woken with a gnawing sense that something needs to be different? You don’t feel like getting up and going through the same routine. It may not even be that anything specific is wrong; it’s just that going on as it is seems artificial or somehow insufficient. There’s gotta be something more, you tell yourself.

Kathy, a client of mine, reached this place about six months ago and realized she had never looked deeply at her values. She’d taken seminars and read self-help books, but uncovering her personal and professional values was never shown her. She came to coaching to investigate whether or not to make a career change and we started her sessions through uncovering her Life and Career Values. 

As we started with her personal values, Kathy noticed a difference in how she was able to make choices.  Yet at first she had asked me, “Why should knowing your values matter so much?”  She added she was slightly embarrassed to ask, as if she should know this. I told her that it’s the courageous ones who are willing to look deeply and ask these important questions about themselves rather than just jump into action. I told her that your values are your divining rod that will help point the way to your next change and that along with passion, vision and purpose they form the four cornerstones of her foundation to build her successful change on. 

Most of my clients are relieved to discover their own personal “map” of themselves.  Yet I told Kathy that many folks don’t begin with this same clarity.

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