Keeping the Family Afloat in Financial Storms

With rising unemployment and under-employment, family finances are becoming more and more of a challenge. And problem finances can create all kinds of other family problems. But there are ways to deal with family finances head one, without avoiding the painful reality. The first and most important thing to face is that: odds are you're not in as bad financial shape as you think – the problem is probably your attitude about money. Auburn University found that only a small percent of the couples reporting money problems actually had inadequate income. There are ways to change your thinking about money.

Family Meetings. Good family communication starts with the family getting together on a regular basis. Once you've got your family meetings going, you can introduce the family budget as a meeting topic. Manda Turetsky gives us great hints about how to best use family meetings for family budget planning, including measurable goals and priority setting. It's important not to shield family from the realities of life. Hiding creates shame. If you shelter the family from financial realities and responsibilities, you may create the very harm you seek to avoid – more financial problems for them as adults.

Stay Flexible. When trouble hits, Rosemary Lichtman says "stay flexible." That way, you can adjust to what comes rather than letting it overwhelm you. If you're not the one with the outside job in your home, do you know enough about the family finances to take over if necessary? You should. Here's six helpful tips from Lichtman.

Troubling times can mean opportunities for individuals and families. A coach can help you see outside the limits you perceive, and help you See a new future for yourself and your family.

www.ManifestationCoaching.com

The Problem of Positive Thinking?

Barbara Ehrenreich is nothing if not a controversial author, and her latest book Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America takes on our most cherished modern possession: our unlimited (she would say unwarranted) optimism. From preachers telling us God wants to give us success, to professionals in medicine and psychology teaching that we can cure ourselves if we only will, we are constantly told to think positive. In many ways Barbara blames all these happy talkers for our current financial difficulties. According to Barbara, Joel Osteen owes us an apology. As one of the most visible and successful preachers of the contemporary positive thinking movement, he was one of the voices encouraging all of us to keep looking at the bright side, while in reality the housing market couldn't maintain its explosive rise in value, real wages continued to fall, and government regulation gave way to corporate abuse and corruption.

The problem, says Barbara, is that an insistence on positive thinking can grow into a refusal to see things as they are. This has led to middle and lower economic class voters to vote against their interests in favor of the "ruling class" because the power of positive thinking encourages them to assume they can be rich too. She cites Joe the Plumber explaining his opposition to Obama's proposed tax on income of $250,000 or more because when he bought his own business he'd have that income and didn't want to pay more taxes then.

Worse still, this "if you only believe" philosophy makes it easy to blame the victim, who clearly won't get out of their own way. It's a more comfortable world of we can blame the victims for their own misfortune.

You may hear of lot of that kind of happytalk when you work with a coach as well. "Just believe," you'll hear. "The universe is just waiting to fulfill your dreams." You may even think you read that on my web site. But you'd be mistaken. Because dreaming isn't enough. Belief isn't enough. The principles of See, Say, Do require more than mere belief or confidence. Those principles require work and risk and effort. And those principles don't guarantee that you'll always get exactly what you want when you want it. The universe is not a vending machine. You don't just insert a token of belief or affirmation and get dispensed a great life. That would be easy, I'll admit, and I'm sure that's why the philosophy is so popular. But some people are seeking something to believe in and hook themselves up with Secrets and other stuff. Other people are simply seeking a method and technology to make change in their life, not a new religion. In a coach they see a teacher, a trainer, and a motivator, but not a guru.

I guess you can tell that her message resonates with me. Looks like a book I'm going to have to read. You can find this book and others by Barbara (and other interesting and challenging writers) in our web site bookstore. Visit often as we are always adding new material.

www.ManifestationCoaching.com

 

It Makes a Coach’s Heart Swell…

When I started coaching, I viewed it as a great way to use my knowledge to help people, and make a little money on the side. I had no idea just how rewarding being a coach is. There is nothing more satisfying than watching a client succeed at challenges and learn valuable skills and lessons in the process. And when I see two triumphs in a row, I get really excited. That's why some recent phone sessions with a client made me so proud.

My client Bill reports to a VP, let's call him Ron, who loves to micromanage. Not only is it annoying, but Ron's frequently uninformed or worse, misinformed, and makes decisions everyone lives to regret. Bill's latest frustration revolved around a letter. Ron wanted Bill to write to a customer in pretty strong language about a disagreement over their account. Bill knew the customer and knew that a letter like the one Ron wanted would probably lose them the customer – and it was a pretty big customer.

Being a realist, Bill knew that he could just sit back and do "as ordered," and lose the customer, and that if he did so, he would be the one blamed. Bill knew he had to get a different outcome. But how could he get Ron to change his mind? They had already discussed all the reasons why Bill thought it was a bad idea, and Ron reasonably listened to them all, rejected them, and made it clear he would brook no further resistance. He wanted the letter as he ordered. Bill saw no way out. Either he refused a direct order and probably lost his job, or he lost a customer and probably lost his job. That's when he called me.

The first thing Bill had to do was release his panic. And panicked he was. He was already sure he was going to lose his job, his apartment, his car, his girlfriend. He was coming to me to help him prepare to rebuild his life!

After I got Bill to breathe a little bit, he was able to speak in full sentences without gasping and his voice stopped trembling. But his fear was as palpable as ever. He was locked into a dyad of disasters. But at least, finally, he had returned his attention outward instead of focusing inward on his imaginary unfolding traumas.

I was a bit unnerved. I'd never heard him like this. Normally Bill was pretty solid, ambitious but frustrated because he didn't seem to be getting anywhere. Our previous sessions revolved around how to change his approach at work to be more effective and position himself for better opportunities. Bill always seemed to have problems getting his point across, and was frustrated because he felt side-lined.

"Bill," I asked, "Why are those the only two options? Aren't there other possible choices, other possible outcomes?" "Like what," he demanded. Tough question. I didn't have an answer, or at least not one he wanted. "I don't know, but isn't it possible that if you thought about it, you might find one?" I countered. Bill was skeptical but because we had worked together before, he had developed enough trust to try my suggestions despite his skepticism. I reminded Bill about the "see, say, do" we've discussed, and that he needed to work on Seeing. I gave Bill some suggestions for themes to mediate on and for affirmations to write himself before going to sleep. He'd used both techniques successfully in the past.

In the quantum world, every possibility exists simultaneously. Many scientists say that our mind is a quantum device; that we are constantly choosing from among myriad probabilities to create the next moment as we live it. Using that model, specific meditations can open the mind to the infinite possibilities of the quantum universe. Using the unconscious mind for a search eliminates the noise of your physical reality and internal talking. Since time is not relevant in the quantum reality, much work can be done in a little of our time.

Bill didn't need much help. All he really needed was to internalize that there were other choices besides the two he saw presently. Once he had created space for a different alternative, his mind's quantum search found it. He called me the next morning.

"I know what I'm going to do," he said confidently. "Congratulations," I said. "Do you want to talk about it now or debrief afterward?" I asked. "I'll call later and we'll debrief. I've got to get ready for a meeting with Ron. Wish me luck!" he said and hung up. I sat there and realized I didn't know what he had decided. Ah, well, at least he had decided, and Bill sounded better than yesterday.

Later that night when I was almost consumed with curiosity, Bill finally called and in a triumphant voice shared what he had done about the letter. "It was so weird," Bill said. "Once I started the meditation, it was almost like some pressure or something was relieved. Like I had a clogged sinus and then it was clear." Bill went on to explain that the pressure went away when he realized that he wasn't stuck with just the two options he currently saw. Through meditation and affirmation, he reminded himself that he truly does believe he lives in an abundant universe and that out of all infinity, there was another solution out there. For Bill, that's all it took.

"Once I got that there had to be another solution, I almost instantly knew what it was," he said. I call this the "filmstrip effect." Film moves at 24 frames per second; a series of still pictures that pass by a lens too fast for your eye to notice that they are separate pictures. It fills in between each shot so that movement looks continuous. The mind always seeks to fill in those blanks. So Bill didn't need to know what his alternatives would be, he simply had to free his mind from limiting himself to only the options directly in front of him. To create blank space in his reality for his mind to fill with choices.

Bill's solution was ingenious. He walked a middle ground. He wrote a letter that leaned heavily in the direction he wanted, and sent the draft to the VP for review. He included a cover memo that indicated the attached memo was a draft. But here's where he got creative.

He explained to the VP that he drafted the letter as he had done because he was sure it would upset the customer's sensitivities otherwise, and because he wasn't sure that he understood the VP's desires well enough to do something that would likely lose a client.

In the end, the two of them agreed on a message to the customer that expressed the VP's frustrations, but not in a way guaranteed to lose the customer. It ended up being the VP's idea. Well, not really. As the VP explained how Bill had "misunderstood" the VP's desires, he assured Bill that losing a customer was never his desire, and ended up dictating a response very close to Bill's original proposal. He just needed room to change his mind without feeling like he was admitting that he made a mistake. Bill was mature enough to understand that trying to be a know-it-all would not work for this problem, and would probably make it worse.

He was secure enough in his knowledge to pretend that any difficulty with the VP's desires was really his own. In the end, where a prouder person would have insisted on their way and lost the argument, Bill yielded a little and got pretty much what he wanted.

Next time, instead of resisting, seek to understand. For the sake of communication, assume the disconnect is you, and seek more information. You may learn something and change your mind, or the other person might learn something from you but not in a way they cannot accept.

So Bill demonstrated two powerful lessons in his own life. That connecting to the infinite can quiet the animal fear that cages us with artificial limits. And that seeking to understand is the greatest way to change the world.

That's makes coaching worth it.

www.ManifestationCoaching.com

 

Surviving the wave…

As the stock market drops in reaction to disappointing unemployment news, the job market can only get worse in response. In fact, experts are predicting a 10% national unemployment rate by next quarter. Remember when we thought we in California were the unlucky ones with double digit unemployment? It's going national.

That means if you're going to survive, or actually thrive, you must rise above the crowd. You've got to find that thing which makes you uniquely valuable. Whether you're selling a product, an idea, a service, or yourself, supply is outstripping demand on most areas. That means the buyer has a choice – lots of them in fact. So somehow you have to distinguish yourself.

You have the raw material. Mostly you have to start thinking like your desired customer. Learn their vocabulary, their concerns. Tell them the things about you that will speak to those issues.

This little blog article is too short to go into great detail about applying competitive advantage
analysis to various situations. But there's a step before the analysis, and that's freeing your vision. As challenging as the analysis can be, freeing your vision and throwing down your preconceptions about yourself and the world is really a test!

In his Life Optimizer blog, Donald Latumahina gives hints for finding opportunities, but what he's really talking about is opening your creative eyes. That's the first step to thinking differently, and thinking differently is the next step to creating real change in your life.

http://www.manifestationcoaching.com/