Santa is Coming to Town!

Kind of hard to believe it now but 28 years ago, more or less on this day, I dressed up as Santa Claus for a room full of 3-5 year old Taiwanese children in Tainan, Taiwan. 
It was Christmas eve and I, as the "English teacher" was there to show the kids how Santa looks in Western countries. 
Pretty funny since I never got anywhere near Santa Claus in my New York-Israel Jewish upbringing, but who's counting anyway...in fact, Santa Claus is a pretty cool concept wherever you go, since we are all human beings who were once children and who does not love a "good-doing Grandpa" who is there to make us smile, give us gifts and excitement.

So Happy Santa and Merry Christmas to all of you good people out there wherever you are! Let's remember that if we did not have Santa we would have to invent him...kindness is not a parochial, narrow and sectarian thing but a common human theme so essential to our lives. As the Dalai Lama once said: "Kindness is my religion."

You Have a Choice

Pema Chodron, a great teacher and superb writer for Western audiences:

”YOU HAVE A CHOICE

If you have embarked on this journey of self-reflection, you may be at a place that everyone, sooner or later, experiences on the spiritual path. After a while it seems like almost every moment of your life you’re there, where you realize you have a choice. You have a choice whether to open or close, whether to hold on or let go, whether to harden or soften, whether to hold your seat or strike out. That choice is presented to you again and again and again."

I think one of the biggest blocks people have is that they often forget that THEY HAVE A CHOICE! It may be hard to see, difficult to extricate ourselves from fear, sadness or even tragedy, but the bottom is, and will always be, that WE HAVE A CHOICE!

Are we going to make that choice?

Making more by Doing Less

One of the things I find more and more of is that people are having a hard time figuring out what it is that they really need to do and what can be left aside. In other words, how to figure out what is effectiveness, what is efficiency, but it is really mostly about finding out what is ESSENTIAL- is it not?

I loved the title of this book "Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less",Greg Mckeown,Crown Business/Imprint of Crown Publishing Group. In our age of too much information, too much to do and too little time to do it in, there is this message which says, "make more by doing less", give yourself a life instead of being just a "do-er". People who are feeling stretched too thin, finding themselves saying "yes" where they really should be saying "no", seeing that their "To- Do Lists" keep moving from one day to the next…it is these people (and are we not all of us at least a little bit like this?) that need this message urgently!

However, I don't think it just goes like that, you read a book, get this cool buzzword, "less is more" and then life gets back in stride, no, I don't think it goes that way, unfortunately. The "essentialist process" is one of constant focusing, asking what is really important, remembering to honor the essential balance of life even when others want your time and energy. It starts with a commitment to oneself that life is going to be managed according to principles and priorities, without become robotic and feeling-less- that is what I find in this word "essentialist"… I like it!

Coaching's Differentiating Factor: Action!

Coaching shares many qualities with other modalities of therapy, assistance and consulting, mostly in developing new ways of seeing things, understanding things and providing a secure way to communicate with the outside party. 
However, if there is one clear differentiating factor that is what I admire most about coaching it is that of "action". 
No matter what you are talking about and aiming for, a good coach will not only settle for being "someone to talk to" but he will be wary of the client leaving the session without action items to DO. 
It is mind and body, body and action, goals that help focus the mind and the action. 
It is one main differentiating and....the reason that is works so well and is so popular.

"Words may show a man's wit, but actions his meaning."  
Benjamin Franklin