Do you protect your new goals and projects, your inspirations, and ideas, from outside contamination?

Your new goals, projects, inspirations, and ideas are seedlings. You’ve just planted them in rich fertile soil and watered them.

They are barely sprouting up above the ground.  They are young and fragile, easy to trample and destroy.

Most people don’t have your best interests at heart.  They would sooner see you fail because your success makes them feel bad about themselves.  Even the people you love, the people who are closest to your heart can, consciously or unconsciously, have mixed motives.

If you want to succeed, do not share your goals, projects, inspirations, and ideas, especially before you’ve got them fully grounded and self-sustaining, with anyone but those you absolutely and wholeheartedly trust. 

Again, sometimes we think we can trust our secrets with close family members and friends, when we can’t.  If your gut says ‘no’, listen.  It might not speak loudly, but you will feel a little nagging feeling or slightly uncomfortable.  Your inner knowing doesn’t shout, it whispers. Listen.

Sometimes it’s best to tell no one rather than risk a negative projection or reaction, which can be camouflaged as ‘just looking out for your best interests’ or ‘playing the devil’s advocate’ and can fill you with doubt.  And doubt is poison. It can easily destroy what you’ve started.

Once your seedling takes root and is a sturdy young tree, once your tree is able to weather challenging conditions and is able to not only survive but thrive, then sharing is a different story. Use your common sense and intuition to decide when the time is right.

“You don’t know my family or best friend", people tell me.  Maybe not. But people will try to sabotage your success for all kinds of reasons.  Maybe it makes them feel bad about themselves, shining a bright light on how unhappy or stuck they feel in their lives.  Maybe they are afraid that you will no longer need them, that you will move away or distance yourself once success lights up your life.

So, protect your seedlings from all negative thoughts, projections and influences. Err on the side of caution. Trust your intuition. Be discerning.  Nurture and love your seedlings, knowing and visualizing that they are now magnificent, strong, and sturdy trees.

It feels like we are facing a technology disaster everywhere.

Don’t get me wrong, I am so grateful for the ease and flow of communicating that cell phones and the internet have given us.  I am just wondering if it is numbing you and I to the beauty of life and what’s really going on in the world because we are addicted to getting and receiving messages.  Everywhere I go, people are looking down at their cell phones, not interacting with each other, even when walking down the street.

It can’t be good for business. People do business with people that they like and trust, and that means getting to know one other, face-to-face interaction. We need human contact; it helps us to feel connected and part of life; it helps us to feel belonging and give us a sense of purpose.

So, here’s my challenge.  Let me know your experience.

Give your friends, colleagues, and staff your undivided attention when you are with them. Listen to what they have to say. Put your cell phone away. Focus on them, learning, absorbing, and enjoying the conversation.

People like people who listen to them. People like people who understand them, who get them and what they’re about.  Listening is good for business, good for your personal and social life.

When your clients or customers feel seen, understood, and heard, they are more likely to stick around for the long haul.  When the people you love and care about know that they can count on you to listen and work things out together or just be fully present in the moment, having fun, that adds a new dimension to your life and theirs, and that’s priceless.

Replacing patterns and programs from childhood and beyond that drag our clients down and cause them to contract takes awareness, a commitment to change and lots of and lots of practice with new ways of Being.

It also takes wrapping their loving arms around the bits of them that feel abandoned, rejected, and betrayed, that feel lost and alone.  As the parent to these kids, teens, and younger adults inside of them, they are the ones that have that special formula of love, nurturance, and support to create lasting transformation and positive change.

As a coach, we don’t delve into the past.  We focus on how our clients’ patterns and programs are affecting them now.  For example, if a client believes and espouses that all men will love her intensely and then cheat on her and leave, she may be creating that scenario over and over in her life. 

The Law of Attraction is in part about:  What we focus on is what we create in our lives. 

Holding a loving, supporting coaching presence for our clients to explore such patterns and programs as they are ready to do so is key.  Sometimes, it’s about noticing something that’s happening now, sharing it with the client and handing our intuition or comments back to the client to ponder, accept, reject and/or respond.  Sometimes it’s asking questions that give them the opportunity to delve more deeply into what’s going on for them. 

In any case, we must be mindful not to drop into mentoring, consulting, or counseling as coaches while being fully present, non-judgmental, and engaged with the client without any attachment to where the client lands by the end of our engagement or during any coaching session. 

I’m often amazed that having no attachment to or expectations as to outcomes is where the magic happens.   What I think the client should realize or where I think the client should end up cannot enter into the equation.  This negates their internal compass, which I have been shown time and time again is far superior to anything that I decide in my mind.

This heartfelt mindset and my experiences as a coach has inspired me to share what you may already know from your own coaching experiences. 

How does it resonate with you or not? What could you add to make this sharing more complete?

Communication is key to our success. It's not only what we say, it's how we say it, the feeling behind our body language and words.

You know what it feels like when the person you are talking to is angry, frustrated and unwilling to listen, unwilling to consider your point of view, your input.

Whether we respond or react when talking with difficult or upset people, that's the key to whether open communication is possible. When we respond, you don't buy into their projections or what they are saying; we don't take it personally. This is not always easy. But the truth is that their reaction to us or their projection of their negative feelings at you says everything about them and little, if anything, about us.

It's important to protect ourselves. it's just common sense to shield ourselves from the unkindness or even venom of others. The key is holding an open, non-judgmental space with clear and appropriate boundaries, a space that is open and inviting to share and exchange ideas, while not allowing the negativity and projections affect us.  We send it back to its original source.

Sometimes we just need to walk away.  Some people are so closed, so about getting their point over the goal line, so toxic, that to be in our personal integrity, we must leave. 

And, if we don't judge someone who is difficult or having a bad hair day.  If we simply listen and allow them to vent.  If we just want to know what they are feeling and thinking and why, the whole situation can diffuse; new doors can open and new possibilities; new solutions that you never dreamed were possible of a little while ago are on the table and being discussed. Most people simply need to be acknowledged and heard in order to work things out. Active listening, being fully present with someone, giving them our full attention, asking questions with a genuine curiosity to clarify or learn more is a very rare commodity; if we can do that, we are one in a million.  

Most people are distracted or inattentive when we are trying to communicate with them.  Or they are interrupting us and sharing something about them, to bring the conversation back to them, or to 'prove' that they are right about something and you're 'wrong'. 

So, it's important to watch our attitude.  If we believe that we are right and they are wrong, communication is not possible because we are in lockdown. 

Negotiation, working out agreements or compromises, is one aspect of communication. It can be really fun when we actively listen without judgment; being a good negotiator is also about knowing our bottom line, being really clear on what we'd like to see and how far we are willing to go.  And it's about being open to new ways of getting to our destination.

Negotiating is like a dance; we don't have to agree with someone or follow their lead to actively listen. We simply need to drop all expectations about who they are and what they are going to say, greeting them as if for the very first time.

So, we're building rapport, feeling more affinity with those we work and socialize with, those we live with and love.

No one is an island. We need people we can relate to and people you can count on.  It's not rocket science.  It's how we are built.

So, practice listening, drop the judgment, hold an open inviting space with clear, strong boundaries and let's see how we go, noticing what changes for us.