Coach or Counselor – Which is the Right One for You?

There is a world of a difference between a counselor and a coach. I have a professional background in both and feel uniquely qualified to write this article.A counselor’s primary aim is to zero in on the clients psychological or emotional state in order to bring the client into a state of being whole. Counselors focus in on what is wrong with the client in order to fix it.

A coach has an entirely different focus. Our orientation is more towards the future instead of the past. The agenda is to bring the client to a place of setting goals and taking action. Coaching is a very growth oriented and the relationship between the client and coach stay focused upon this.

Coaches work to bring the client into a place of discovery; consequently, they usually do not give much advice or lead with clear suggestions. An effective coach will help their client take ownership for the ideas they come up with and the action required to achieve results.

Is counseling a bad thing? I think counseling and coaching have their own unique place. When the need of the client is kept in the forefront, what method is required will become obvious. As a general rule, counselors work with people who have issues that they can’t seem to get on top of which are negatively affecting them. Coaches generally work with people who are very oriented towards their future and who are seeking help to accomplish their goals.

There are many different types of coaching but the kinds that I specialize in are life-forming and leadership. I have taken extensive training in both and received certification for completing the required training.

Life-forming coaching is probably the closest to counseling without it actually being counseling. In this approach it is not unusual for the coach to help the client key in on any issues that might be hindering their leadership effectiveness. The difference between the life-forming coach and the counselor is what they do next.

The coach will immediately help the client to take responsibility for any wrong actions and help them to go forward. The counselor on the other hand, will continue probing beyond this point in order to diagnose the problem for treatment.

If you desire to clarify your life’s purpose so you can passionately pursue it, I suggest you engage a coach. If you want to take your career or business to the next level but you seem stuck, I suggest you spend time with a coach. But if you have deep emotional issues related to a present or past experience then coaching probably is not what you need at this time.

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Time Management And Success

Another key to success is the effective management of time. Time management is all about staying focused. The Pareto Principle can be applied to this area. It basically states that 80% of the effects come from only 20% of the actions.

80% of unfocused efforts will only produce 20% of desired results. However, 20% of time focused and well managed effort will produce 80% of desired output. The 80/20 rule is not always accurate but it is a good gauge in time management and planning.

Some people view time management as a list of rules that involves scheduling of appointments, goal settings, thorough planning, creating things to do lists and prioritizing. These are the core basics of time management that should be understood to develop an efficient personal time management skill. These basic skills can be fine tuned further to include the finer points of each skill that can give you that extra reserve to make the results you desire.

But there are more skills involved in time management than the core basics. Skills such as decision making, inherent abilities such as emotional intelligence and critical thinking are also essential to your personal growth.

Personal time management involves everything you do. No matter how big and no matter how small, everything counts. Each new area of knowledge you acquire, each new piece of advice you consider, each new skill you develop, should be taken into consideration.

Having a balanced life-style should be the key result in using personal time management. This is the main aspect that many practitioners of personal time management fail to grasp.

Time management is about getting results, not about being busy.

The six areas that personal time management seeks to improve in anyone’s life are physical, intellectual, social, career, emotional and spiritual.

The physical aspect involves having a healthy body, less stress and fatigue.

The intellectual aspect involves learning and other mental growth activities.

The social aspect involves developing personal or intimate relations and being an active contributor to society.

The career aspect involves school, work and business.

The emotional aspect involves appropriate feelings and desires and manifesting them.

The spiritual aspect involves a personal quest for meaning and purpose in life.

Thoroughly planning and having a “to do” list for each of the key areas may not be very practical, but determining which area in your life is not being given enough attention is part of time management. Each area creates the whole you, if you are ignoring one area then you are ignoring an important part of yourself.

Personal time management should not be so intimidating a task. It is a very sensible and reasonable approach in solving problems big or small.

A great way of learning time management and improving your personal life is to follow several basic activities.

One of them is to review your goals often, whether they be immediate or long-term.

A way to do this is to keep a list that is always accessible to you. You can use either a paper based planner, a PDA, or a smart phone

Always determine which task is necessary in achieving your goals and which activities are helping you maintain a balanced life style.

Each and every one of us has a peek time and a time when we slow down, these are our natural cycles. We should be able to determine when we are the sharpest.

Here are a couple more points:

1.Learn to say no even if it involves saying the word to family or friends.

2.Pat yourself on the back or just reward yourself in any manner for an effective time management result.

3.Try and get the cooperation from people around you who are actually benefiting from your efforts of time management.

4.Don’t procrastinate. Attend to necessary things immediately.

5.Have a positive attitude and set yourself up for success. But be realistic in your approach in achieving your goals.

6.Have a record or journal of all your activities. This will help you get things in their proper perspective.

These are just a few steps you can initially take in becoming a well rounded individual who manages their time effectively.

 

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Life Coaching – What Is It?

Life Coaching, also known as personal coaching, can help you with all areas of your life: family, finances, career, relationships, health and spirituality. It can be especially useful for self-employed people and independent professionals. Life coaching evolved from executive coaching, and many of the techniques developed in leadership training and management consulting. Life coaching also draws freely from the disciplines of sociology, psychology, vocational counseling, mentoring, and other types of counseling, but it is not counseling or consulting. The Life Coach clearly recognizes his or her limitations, and will refer the client for other services as ethically required.

A life coach is someone you hire to help assist you with your personal development, especially in the area of setting and achieving specific goals. They may use questions, times of reflection, discussion and specific request to help their clients identify goals related to personal, relational, career and business areas of their life. Once this first step is accomplished they will usually help the client to develop necessary relationships, strategies and action steps to achieve those goals.

Life coaching is not as well known, as it should be because of its confidential nature. It has been used successfully by over 200,000 people world wide.

If you generate income from e-commerce activities such as blogging, affiliate marketing, Ebay stores or other online business you are a perfect candidate for a life coach. Coaching is designed to help you break through those barriers online entrepreneurs frequently face. Life coaches can specialize in areas like relationships, careers or personal growth. “As with any relationship, it’s important for coach and client to ‘click’ interpersonally.

A Life Coach usually schedules sessions with you by phone (telephone coaching), in weekly appointments, to partner with you in identifying your desires, and to help you find your core values and goals. He or she will encourage you to take action, and do all they can to help you achieve success. Failure to plan and set goals and action steps is one of the major reasons for lack of success in online ventures.

Remember that life coaching is about encouraging you, acknowledging you, motivating you, and moving you through old patterns and limitations so you can get into effective action. It is a designed relationship between coach and client where the coaching alliance continually gives all the power back to the client. If you think life coaching could be helpful, then try it out and see if it is for you. Discover what this process is all about and join the many people worldwide who have gained the benefits from Life Coaching.

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The Last Chance to get a Free Copy of My Prayer Book

This will definitely be the last month that I can offer the book I wrote on prayer for free and January 31, 2012 will be the last day it is available as a free download.  We are currently in the process of editing and expanding it.  A lot has changed in our lives since I first wrote this book and we believe the new information will make it a much better book.

An unwilling God is not the problem.  I am more convinced of this fact now than ever before.  My wife Lin and I have experienced some incredible answers to prayer and we have been blessed to share with others who have too.

Hurry and get your copy of “The 3P’s of Effective Prayer” while it is available as a free download.  We will announce the new book once it is ready.

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Expediency, Penn State and Joe Paterno

Expediency

We live in a culture where the end frequently is seen to justify the means.  As I write this post Joe Paterno, one of the most successful college football coaches in history, has just been fired.  His dismissal is related to an apparent cover up of former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky’s possible involvement in child molestation while he served at Penn State.  He was a very good defensive coordinator and Penn State enjoyed success during his employment.  It should be noted that Joe Paterno is not charged with any crime but the trustee’s of the university felt strong enough about this error in judgment to dismiss not only Paterno but Graham Spanier, the current president of the school.

Now before you feel too sorry for the 84 year old Paterno, take note of the apparent fact, that one of the assistant coaches went to Joe Paterno to report that Sandusky was in the shower with a 10 year old boy.  This whole incident in my opinion is a prime example of a culture steeped in expediency.  This situation revolves around winning football games but I ask, at what cost?

Turning attention away from Joe Paterno and Penn State let me ask all of us a personal question.  How often do we make decisions totally based upon our own self interest?  Our prayer should be God help us all.

There was rioting in Happy Valley last night.  From my experience with Penn State many of the participants were under the influence of booze or other substances.  This does not excuse the fact that the going concern was probably not to change coaches during a winning season.  Earlier today I heard two elderly women talking about this disturbance and one of them said, “It is just football for God’s sake”.  For God’s sake indeed, I wonder how He feels about all of this.  I know the Lord is not in favor of expediency at all cost.  We all could stand some heart-felt soul searching to see how deeply we are infected with this ungodly attitude.

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Walter Brueggemann’s 19 Theses

1. Everybody lives by a script. The script may be implicit or explicit. It may be recognized or unrecognized, but everybody has a script.

2. We get scripted. All of us get scripted through the process of nurture and formation and socialization, and it happens to us without our knowing it.

3. The dominant scripting in our society is a script of technological, therapeutic, consumer militarism that socializes us all, liberal and conservative.

4. That script (technological, therapeutic, consumer militarism) enacted through advertising and propaganda and ideology, especially on the liturgies of television, promises to make us safe and to make us happy.

5. That script has failed. That script of military consumerism cannot make us safe and it cannot make us happy. We may be the unhappiest society in the world.

6. Health for our society depends upon disengagement from and relinquishment of that script of military consumerism. This is a disengagement and relinquishment that we mostly resist and about which we are profoundly ambiguous.

7. It is the task of ministry to de-script that script among us. That is, too enable persons to relinquish a world that no longer exists and indeed never did exist.

8. The task of descripting, relinquishment and disengagement is accomplished by a steady, patient, intentional articulation of an alternative script that we say can make us happy and make us safe.

9. The alternative script is rooted in the Bible and is enacted through the tradition of the Church. It is an offer of a counter-narrative, counter to the script of technological, therapeutic, consumer militarism.

10. That alternative script has as its most distinctive feature, its key character – the God of the Bible whom we name as Father, Son, and Spirit.

11. That script is not monolithic, one dimensional or seamless. It is ragged and disjunctive and incoherent. Partly it is ragged and disjunctive and incoherent because it has been crafted over time by many committees. But it is also ragged and disjunctive and incoherent because the key character is illusive and irascible in freedom and in sovereignty and in hiddenness, and, I’m embarrassed to say, in violence – [a] huge problem for us.

12. The ragged, disjunctive, and incoherent quality of the counter-script to which we testify cannot be smoothed or made seamless. [I think the writer of Psalm 119 would probably like too try, to make it seamless]. Because when we do that the script gets flattened and domesticated. [This is my polemic against systematic theology]. The script gets flattened and domesticated and it becomes a weak echo of the dominant script of technological, consumer militarism. Whereas the dominant script of technological, consumer militarism is all about certitude, privilege, and entitlement this counter-script is not about certitude, privilege, and entitlement. Thus care must betaken to let this script be what it is, which entails letting God be God’s irascible self.

13. The ragged, disjunctive character of the counter-script to which we testify invites its adherents to quarrel among themselves – liberals and conservatives – in ways that detract from the main claims of the script and so too debilitate the focus of the script.

14. The entry point into the counter-script is baptism. Whereby we say in the old liturgies, “do you renounce the dominant script?”

15. The nurture, formation, and socialization into the counter-script with this illusive, irascible character is the work of ministry. We do that work of nurture, formation, and socialization by the practices of preaching, liturgy, education, social action, spirituality, and neighboring of all kinds.

16. Most of us are ambiguous about the script; those with whom we minister and I dare say, those of us who minister. Most of us are not at the deepest places wanting to choose between the dominant script and the counter-script. Most of us in the deep places are vacillating and mumbling in ambivalence.

17. This ambivalence between scripts is precisely the primary venue for the Spirit. So that ministry is to name and enhance the ambivalence that liberals and conservatives have in common that puts people in crisis and consequently that invokes resistance and hostility.

18. Ministry is to manage that ambivalence that is equally present among liberals and conservatives in generative faithful ways in order to permit relinquishment of [the] old script and embrace of the new script.

19. The work of ministry is crucial and pivotal and indispensable in our society precisely because there is no one [see if that’s an overstatement]; there is no one except the church and the synagogue to name and evoke the ambivalence and too manage a way through it. I think often; I see the mundane day-to-day stuff ministers have to do and I think, my God, what would happen if you took all the ministers out. The role of ministry then is as urgent as it is wondrous and difficult.

http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/25301.htm

http://soupiset.typepad.com/soupablog/Brueggemann_19_Theses.html

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What is Bag-Lady Syndrome?

Let me say up front that it is not a real syndrome at all but a generalized anxiety that many women have from time to time. In this article bag-lady syndrome is exposed. Click here to read the article

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Why is Will Smith Successful?

Why is Will Smith so successful? Maybe he was just in the right place at the right time. Or could it be because he is so abundantly talented above so many others. In this video Will Smith gives some clear insights into his mindset and ideas about life.  Click here for Will Smith Video

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Budgeting Worksheets PDF

When I was a teenager still in school sometimes I would get my lunch money at the beginning of the week and it had to last through Friday.  It did not take me long to realize that if I spent my money by Wednesday I would be hungry on Thursday and Friday because my Mom would not give me any more money.

Budgeting is best taught to the young but it is never too late to learn.  Here are some worksheets ranging from a one page simple one to a cash flow one from Dave Ramsey.

Simple one page budgeting worksheet

Colorful 3 page budget worksheet (From Canada)

Dave Ramsey cash flow worksheet

Notice what is missing from the worksheet from Canada

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The Seduction of the Christian Conservative Right by Mormon Glen Beck

Frequently there is a lot more going on behind the scenes and the average person involved in a movement or cause is not aware of these happenings.  There are many theological differences between the Mormon church and Evangelical Christianity.  For one thing, Mormons hold the Book of Mormon as authoritative and esteem it on a par with the Bible.

Enter Glen Beck who has become somewhat of a spokesman for conservatives in the United States.  He is able to organize and hold a rally in the nation’s capitol that drew thousands of people.

I think most people are aware of the fact that Sarah Palin will not emerge as a frontrunner when the candidates emerge for the next election for President.  The person to keep an eye on is Mitt Romney and he just happens to be a Mormon.

The stage is being set to pull many who identify themselves as Christians into the place where they will vote for a Mormon for president.  There is a provocative book that was recently written  *Tears of a Clown: Glenn Beck and the Tea Bagging of America by Dana Milbank which addresses this whole Mormon issue and political expediency.  Once I get a chance to read it I will do an update to this post.

*affiliate link

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