Happy Samhain/ Halloween!

I like to share beliefs of other cultures so today I want to talk about Samhain. In case you have never heard of it.

Samhain “summer’s end” is a Gaelic festival. It is a combination festival day of the dead and the end of harvest season. It is also the start of the “darker” half of the year and the start of the spiritual new year.

It makes sense, doesn’t it? The days are getting shorter so there is less day light. It is also the time of year when we look toward Thanksgiving which is about the end of harvest. It is a time when nature relaxes and some animals hibernate. We get rested up. We also become more spiritual in December. We become more focused on bringing up mankind, spreading love, joy and peace, our spiritual season if you will. Then we have New Years when we let go of the past and put hope into the next year. We start January with positive thoughts.

So, may you have a Happy Halloween or Samhain!

Cheers!

Coach

www.facebook.com/lisaylifecoach

Rise up when being pulled down.

Is someone trying to bring you down? I have a nephew trying to bring me down. The hard part of this is that I have been very nice to him. I have tried to help him make his life nice and to live his dream. And now he is trying to hurt me. And to top it off he is  not speaking to me. He has put up a wall of silence, and is hiding from me. And family who could help look the other way. You can’t get others to help if they don’t want to get involved.

What to do?

Well, you can’t let them bring you down. I find it a challenge. I find it a challenge to raise myself up. I am very competitive. When that wall of silence went up, I became determined to get past it. And I did.

I went out of my comfort zone and did things I don’t like to do. I had to make cold calls to find help. I had to ask for help. I succeeded!  I found the help I needed, asked for help and got it. I am rising.

Then what? I felt I could do anything. I confirmed that I have control over my life. No one else is in control of my life. If someone is trying to bring you down, you can let them or you can take control and rise to the occasion.

Letting someone else control you sucks. You start bringing yourself down. You feel like a loser or failure or wimp or pushover or any number of things.

Taking the challenge and rising to the occasion feels great. You are a winner or successful or capable or any number of things. And as was true for me, you feel you can meet other challenges. You are the only barrier to having what you want.

If you think you can’t, you can’t. I know that sounds cheesy, but it is true. You may be meeting a survival need by limiting your self. But is that working for you? When that no longer works for you, you are ready to meet that need on a higher level.

Listen, I went out of my comfort zone. I had to push myself to do what I did to accomplish what I wanted to accomplish. And in the end I showed myself what I can do, and so can you.

Be pulled down or rise up… the choice is yours. You are in control.

Cheers!

Coach.

www.facebook.com/lisaylifecoach

Happy now and later

We all have goals: 

Goals for love. Goals for family. Goals for career. Goals for health. Goals for things we want to see and do. Goals for all sorts of things.

My ordeal.

I recently met a very important goal. It was actually a short lived goal. It was made and accomplished in 9 weeks.  But those 9 weeks were a nightmare. Meeting this goal is life changing. Meeting this goal makes all the difference in my future. I was consumed over it. I thought about it every minute of every day. How will I accomplish this? How? I tried alone. That only got me so far. I hired someone whose job it is to accomplish this goal. After $550, I still did not have the answer. So, I contacted someone who I thought I could help. I thought this person could lead me in the right direction. Well, she gave a few tips, but nothing concrete. I took her tips and made some calls. I did stumble on someone willing to help, but I did not want to ask this person. This person was a perfect stranger going out of his way to help. It seemed too good to be true. So, I contacted another professional whose job it is to accomplish this goal.  This person made an attempt. And was not successful. Luckily this attempt was free. At this point I felt pretty hopeless. Then out of desperation I thought about this stranger who said he was good at accomplishing this goal. I had my doubts, but what did I have to lose? So, I contacted this kind stranger. “You said you would help.” Well, on Monday, this kind stranger, now my friend, in 30 minutes accomplished the goal. In 30 minutes I met my goal. After all the hours I put into this goal, one person, the right person got me there. There is still work to be done, but the biggest hurdle has been cleared. And I know my friend will get me through the rest.

Why and I telling you this? 

Reason one. To show you that goals can be met. We don’t always meet them how we plan on meeting them. I thought I could do it myself. Then I thought the first “professional” could do it. Then I thought I could do it myself. Then I thought the second “professional” could do it. I felt hopeless. Then it took overcoming the fear I have and do some cold calling. I hate cold calling anyone, but the need was so great that nothing would stop me. And that is how I found my new friend who got me to my goal.

Reason two. To show you that often it takes effort and persistence to meet a goal. But when you really want something, everything comes together to make it happen. I contacted someone I did not want to contact who gave me tips. From there I overcame a fear and made cold calls. When I asked my “last hope” person for help, it happened. I could have given up after the first “professional” failed to get me to my goal (I think for more money he would have accomplished the mission).  But I did not give up.

Reason three. There are certain things we just can’t do alone. We don’t always understand how to accomplish a goal. If I knew what my new friend knows, I could have accomplished step one in 30 minutes. It is important to find the right person to help. In my case, there were two right people. There was the person who gave the tips (she only gave tips because that is all she knew). And then there was the person I found through my cold calling.

Reason four. To show the value of delayed gratification. This particular goal took 9 weeks. But, this ordeal started about 3 years ago. Until recently, there was nothing, absolutely nothing I could do to make my situation better. I had to wait. There were circumstances out of my control. That is how it goes sometimes. Sometimes you have to just sit back and let other things work out. It is sort of like sitting in a traffic jam. You want to get somewhere so badly, but you can’t get anywhere. Eventually, the traffic clears and you get moving. You reach your destination.

How do you feel in that traffic jam?

When you are stuck, and things are out of your control, it is frustrating. But there is nothing you can do so you have to make the best of where you are. Another way of putting this is that the ball is not always in your court. And sometimes there is delay because we need time to heal.

That was what I needed. I needed time to heal. Those 3 long years of waiting for things to clear up so that I could move forward and turn this ordeal around were frankly very difficult. But I had to go through that. I had to let go. I had to let the universe do it’s thing. You see, the other side of this ordeal, the other people involved, they had to go through what they had to go through before the traffic jam we were all involved in could clear up. We are all connected. Some things take time. So, for 3 years, I waited. I did the best to get on with life until the traffic cleared. And when it did it took 9 weeks to get on the off ramp that leads to my final destination in this ordeal.

When the dark cloud lifted. 

When I met that goal that took 9 very long and tiring weeks, I felt powerful. I felt as if a very dark cloud was lifted. I felt as if I could do anything…. anything. This is the third time in the last 4 years that I saw the miracle of things coming together. When things are ready to come together, amazing things happen.

When we have goals, we want it to happen now. And sometimes it does. And sometimes it doesn’t.

If you were to meet all your life’s goals, how would you feel?

For those goals that are stuck in traffic, just sit back and relax. I know it is hard. I had to wait 3 long years for my traffic jam to clear. But what kept me going was knowing that things work out. But you can meet your goals. Re read reasons above. Let my experience and testimony of a positive outcome give you hope. We don’t always meet goals how we plan on meeting them, but we do.

We can be happy now striving for our goals when we let ourselves feel that which we want to feel when our outcome is achieved. We will happy later when that goal is met.

Cheers!

Coach

www.facebook.com/lisaylifecoach

 

 

Get strength from the silent treatment

Hello

So many of my posts are written because of my own experience. It is my hope that by sharing things with you I can help you. I want to share with you the strength I recently got from the silent treatment.

I have a nephew with whom I have a strong bond. He has had issues with drugs. I thought he had finally gotten clean. I was wrong. So, without knowing that he was vulnerable he and his wife and I entered an agreement. I would help him to get into a business. We three would run it together. They would do most of the work, but I would help as needed. This business would give me the financial security I want. Well, he got back in trouble with drugs. It was a nightmare. Things spiraled down and out of control so fast I was numb. There was arrest after arrest.

So, the money was going God knows where, but not into the business. The deal fell through. So there I was with my retirement money getting lost. Not only was I not making this “easy” money at the business, but also they were charging up legal fees etc.  I thought having the business would put me on easy street. I was to get a nice income from a business that my nephew would handle. So, they both ended up doing time for drug related charges. So, they aren’t working and able to make any sort of loan payments.

Now they are both out. I have no relationship with her, but I have one of sorts with him. But since he got out in August, he is giving me the silent treatment. He won’t talk to me at all. I have no phone number, but I have reached out to him on Facebook messenger. But silence. We were communicating through letters when he was behind bars so this came at a complete shock. And fear set in. How am I going to get my money back if I can’t contact him or know where or what he is doing?

But today, I figured out what was going on. In this case, the silent treatment is a wall between us. When he was behind bars, he was free of responsibility. He did not have to find a way to pay me back. He couldn’t. But, now he is out and has to have a job. And now he has to be responsible. This wall of silence is a lame attempt to protect himself from the responsibility of this debt. But it won’t work. I will not be manipulated. I will not be controlled. This ploy to avoid me to shut me out is not going to work. It is having the exact opposite result. I am more determined than ever to get the money back. I want to do this the easy way and have him “voluntarily” pay me back. But if he keeps up this wall then I will be forced to go through the courts. I really don’t want to do that, but I will.

The silent treatment is a nasty ploy. If it lasts for hours (normal person silent treatment), days or years (narcissist silent treatment) , it is an act of passive aggression. It can be for many reasons. In my case, it is a substitute for a prison wall. Often it is to make the victim invisible. It is to make the victim feel insignificant. They want you to think you are not important.

The person using this ploy actually has a lot of feelings, but does not know how to express these feelings. So they don’t. They just shut out the world.

The silent treatment is also used to play on your fears. It says this is what it would be like with out me. It says see how much you need me. Submit. You may have asserted yourself. You may have stood up to this person and now they are putting you back in your place. They want control back. They are trying to create insecurity. Jump through my hoops. Kiss my butt.

The silent treatment is to control, punish, test boundaries and to avoid issues and responsibilities. Silence is actually the most powerful scream. It is a desperate attempt to be heard. But it does not solve problems it makes them worse.

What to do? Well, it differs from case to case. It starts by figuring out what the purpose of the silent treatment is. Understand that no matter the what and why of it the benefit of this ploy is (punishment for example), the survival need being met by the silent treatment is control and certainty. The answer is to find a way to get that goal met on a higher level. And that is the best I can do without knowing more.

But do not let the silent treatment control you. Take example from me and turn it around and have it give you strength. A few days ago, when I coached my mentor coach, I told her I did not want to fight him. I don’t. It is ugly and tiring to have to fight someone in court. But today, after I realized the meaning of the silent treatment I am getting from my nephew, I have strength to fight. Yes, I turned this nasty narcissist ploy to my advantage and so can you.

Cheers!

Coach

www.facebook.com/lisaylifecoach

I coached my coach

So, for a few years I have had my own life coach. (We all need someone). She has not been able to do much coaching lately because of migraines. I tried to talk to her last week, but she was physically not able.

The funny thing is this. I woke up that morning, and I sensed she needed me this time. The plan was to get her input on something I am going through then help her.  I gave her situation a lot of thought on my morning walk. I came up with what I thought was going on with her. Now, normally, a coach will lead the client to the answer. But I took a different approach with her. I analyzed her situation and came up with the situation and solution I felt would help.

I got very disappointed I could not talk to her. I felt bad that her migraines were so terrible. I went through a period of time when I had migraines so I understand to some extent what they are like. But mine were never as bad as her migraines, and mine have since stopped. I also felt bad that I could not coach her. 

Too sick to talk on the phone, I sent her an email. I have to tell you that it felt like a very bold move to coach my coach. I really admire her. I think she is very wise. Who was I to coach her? It felt like an amateur coaching a pro. But I put on my coach’s hat and told her what I thought was going on in her life and what to do.

I sent the email, and really wished to not get a response. I thought she might disagree with my diagnosis and solution. Well, after a few days, there was a quick response on Facebook: My message helped. Thank you.

I was so pleased. She said she had not yet responded to the email due to feeling so disabled. But that she would go into detail later. I was pleased because I helped someone. Not only that, but someone I admire. I helped my mentor. She is the sort of person you don’t think needs any advice or coaching. She seems to have all the answers. I mean she seems to know everything. But we all need help sometimes. She probably does not get a lot of advice from those she coaches.

Last night she made quite a post on Facebook. She talked about how she feels about things. I made a reply. She replied that I was the reason for this post. And she thanked me again. I felt so proud to have helped. I know that my one coaching email made a difference to my coach, my mentor. I look forward to finding out more of how it helped when she feels able to let me know.

In the meanwhile, I know this: I coached my coach and my coach won, and so did I. 

You see, a relationship between a coach and a client is partnership between equals. Your victories are as much your coach’s victories. Her feeling better about things makes me happy. To know that I helped warms my heart and brings a smile to my face.

Anyway, I just wanted to share that success story.

Cheers!

Coach

www.facebook.com/lisaylifecoach