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Every week as a mentor, advisor, and guide, I actively engage my life work with my TIME to Teach, Inspire, Mentor, and Equip learners and leaders. Questions are the playground of mentors, teachers and coaches. As professionals, our task is to ask the right questions in order to create a massive shift in your thinking and behavior. Yesterday evening was an interesting one with two former clients and present friends. I went for a walk and had an iced mocha with one. With the other, it was Thai green curry and rice. Yes, mentoring, coaching, and friendship are opportunities for eating and drinking together. As I listened, learned, and asked questions, I realized that most people fail at finding answers to their challenges for two reasons. Firstly, they ask the wrong questions. Secondly, they don’t ask any questions and continue to lead lives of “quiet desperation.” In my journey of learning about coaching, one of my coaching mentors gave me three steps to gain traction in the journey:

1. Above all things, take time to get CLARITY first: Try to understand the real problem you are trying to solve. Not the spider webs but the spider hiding among the logs! Get clarity on the nature of the beast you are dealing with today.

2.ASK GOOD QUESTIONS and DIFFERENT KINDS: There are many kinds of questions to ask yourself. Some are probing questions that help you delve into the hidden issues, hangups and baggage you are dealing with under the surface. Or maybe a pet dragon that once was cute, nurtured and fed, but now is roaring in the basement and making your house shake! The questions may include expansive questions that help you dream again, think big, and have big hairy audacious goals. Last but not least, action questions like “What will you do and when will you do it?”

3. Finally, TELL THE TRUTH: Lying to others is not kosher but lying to yourself is even worse. When we start lying to ourselves and others, eventually we start believing the lies. Coaches, like us, have to tell you that “DENIAL is not a river in Egypt.” Be honest with yourself as well as with your coach, mentor, or friend. I can’t be everyone’s coach, mentor, or friend, but do reach out if you need some help. If I can’t help you, I will point you to some great coaches, mentors, books, and resources.

So today, what is the most important question you can ask yourself at the beginning of this week?

Most people who know me will not call me fearful but only because they don’t know the real me. When I was 6 years old my beloved father went to work one day and never came back because he died of a heart attack. The loss of my father and protector who was full of joy and life, affected me deeply. I felt abandoned and fearful in the days to come. As I grew I learned to hide my fears well. As I encountered scary experiences as a child and preteen, I began to shut down my feelings of fear by creating an outer shell that hid my fears well. As the years have passed by I have learned a thing or two about courage. I have to daily choose to be fearless.

Most of us want to be courageous. To be courageous is to be wholehearted. It is not the absence of fear but rather faith/Belief in something or someone bigger than the threat. There are two kinds of fears in our world. Real threats and imagined threats. Most of us have a lot of imagined threats that trigger adrenalin. We then get into our flight and fear response generating stress hormones. Real threats are those that seriously threaten your life or well being and we do well to pay attention to them. We do well to teach our children to respond to those threats whether from a bully or a bear! Adrenalin can be a help if it is a real bear but not if it is an imagined bear!

All of us have many imagined threats and fears that paralyze us, limit us and suppress us from living a courageous life. One of the fears that sabotaged my life was “what will people think?”. Sometimes in the past I  moved to a place of bravado where I said “who cares what other people think!” but continued internally to seek the approval of others and made many unwise choices that hurt me and I have to live with the consequences of my choices. It is quite impossible to make all the people around you happy. Have you ever tried making everyone happy! It can make you very unhappy! Happiness is a choice to be who you are and choose how you will be! Choose well!

I have now learned to be courageous by asking ” How will I think?” and care about WHO or WHAT feeds and directs my thinking. That makes a difference. In a day and age where we rush about incessantly it is vital to ask ourselves “How shall we think?” Although you are not your thoughts, it is vital to know that when our minds are renewed with wholesome, positive and energizing thoughts we can choose courage over fear. Choose strength and courage today! All around you are the resources to live a courageous life.

Carpe Diem. Seize the day!

As I teach a required leadership course,  Vocation and Career Planning at a local University,  I am contemplating the words of author, Frederick Buechner.

He says that the place you are called to (Vocatio in Latin)  is “ the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”*

Are you at that place in your life and is that the place you are intentionally planning to move towards? A place of joy and a place of service to others?

*Excerpted from Wishful Thinking—A Theological ABC by Frederick Buechner, revised edition published by HarperOne. Copyright © 1973, 1993 by Frederick Buechner.

It is not hocus pocus! It is all about focus. What you focus upon will expand in your life. If you focus on the positive then the positive will grow. If you focus on the negative….guess what will grow!

The world’s most famous Jewish Rabbi once said:

” “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light.”

What do you see? Do you see the little spot of ink on the paper or all that white space in which to draw, colour and paint!

Try this for the next 7 days!  Before you do anything else oriented around your work, write down 3 things in your journal, you are grateful for in your life.  See what happens! Let me know whether it makes a difference!

Sincerely,

Jonathan

A poem hangs on the wall at Mother Teresa’s orphanage in India. For all who are called to lead, it is a great reminder of what we should do:

1. People are illogical, unreasonable and self-centered (including me). Love them anyway.

2. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Do good anyway.

3. If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway.

4. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.

5. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway.

6. The biggest people with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the littlest people with the littlest ideas. Think big anyway.

7. People favor underdogs, but follow only top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

8. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway.

9. People really need help, but may attack you if you do help them. Help them anyway.

10. Give the world the best you have and you will get kicked in the teeth. Give the best you have anyway.