Learning New Coaching Tools

I am always on the quest for new coaching tools I can learn to help myself and my clients.

As part of this work I am currently enrolled in another Coachville program with Dave Buck, the CEO who inherited Coachville from Thomas Leonard, who was a great personal inspiration to me.

The course is called Extreme Productivity and its pretty full on.   We've done three hours on the phone this week alone and the course runs until November!

By Day Three, Dave was inviting us to do mind mapping.   Ugh!   I HATE mind maps.   Some of you will know I prefer a nice list.

But I thought "what the heck, I'm enrolled with the program, I'll roll with it and do as I'm told, and see what happens".   It's because although I am a rebel, I was also brought up to be a good girl.  Goody Two Shoes, even!

Anyway, I downloaded something Dave recommended called Mind Manager from Mindjet and took the time (well, a bit of time) to watch the tutorial, hate that, always just want to get stuck straight into the project.   And then spent an hour on Thursday afternoon creating a mindmap of my Meaningful Objectives.

My meaningful objectives include: living to be 100, writing, communicating, creating, coaching, helping others find their peace, their passion and their purpose, working in partnership to create profitable businesses for later sale, enjoying and fostering the love of my family and friends, living in financial integrity and creating wealth for myself and others, learning, reading, travelling internationally and unconditional love.   Phew!

But once I got this down on a mind map with the related subtopics, I got much clearer.   And my mindmap has lovely pictures too.   The alternative is to draw this with crayons, paint, or colouredy pens (as I like to call them).   And its surprising how provocative the results are, either way.

When I ran a workshop for Nicola C as part of The Money Gym, we asked the delegates to draw their Primary Aim (it's an E-Myth thang) and you could almost hear the deafening realisations, lumps in throat, tears it was drawing forth.   In coaching we talk a lot about visions, getting clear on what you want, then translating it into a picture.   Even if you think of yourself, as I do, as not a particularly visual person, this is very powerful and you are just going to have to trust me on that one.

You can then insert all sorts of little extra thoughts (or floating sub-topics as Mind Manager calls them) into your vision or map and your core purpose and your values present themselves.   I have always known my core purpose was about helping others, now I know my values are about love, learning, peace, ease, simplicity, communication, well-being, financial integrity, fun and creativity. Can you HAVE so many?   Is it allowed?

How will this help me with Extreme Productivity?   Well EP comes from being "masterfully yourself", true to your values, and from being in harmony with your environment and your energy.   More about these in later postings.

If something doesnt move me forward in the areas I have outlined above, I shan't do it.

Simple.   Motivating.   Productive.

And I'm simply going to have to find someone else to do all those things on my To Do List that I am not motivated to do.   They still need doing, but I am not passionate about doing them, and if they are not related to my core values, they are probably never gonna get done I realise now.   Help!

So its back to coaching basics again.   Do you know what you want?   Do you know what it looks like?   Have you got a picture of it in your mind that is powerfully motivating?   How are you going to get there?  Have you got a map?   A plan, a route, and a guide?

Golly, I LOVE this stuff!

Comments

[Hobart Swan]

Hi Judith,
Thanks for mentioning our software! It is so cool to see people in all walks of life finding out about mapping. We love people finding out about mapping in general--whatever product you use (including "colouredy pens"). Working with more visually stimulating documents just seems to nudge the brain a bit. I pestered my wife (gently) to try our software for her property management business, then asked her what "emotion" mapping brought up for her. "Confidence," she said, "knowing that I'm not going to miss anything." That was good enough for me!

I didn't know Dave Buck used it. Interesting!
Thanks again for the post. If you feel so inclined, check out our blog at blog.mindjet.com.
Hobie Swan
Mindjet