Dr. Earl R. Smith II

It was during one of the first coaching sessions with a new client that the following exchange occurred:

The last decade has seen a major shift in attitude towards executive coaching. Ten years ago the most likely engagement would have been with a client who was having serious problems. Organizations tended to hire executive coaches when one or more of their people was either having or causing serious problems.

A bit of living has shown me how much wisdom there is in that simple statement. All of us have the same experience at times. We realize that we have settled into a rut and wonder how we came to be there.

Those of you who fish will understand. For those of you who don’t, a fishing reel pulls in line when you rotate the handle. Without that action, it is just a curiosity on your end of the fishing pole. To help it to fulfill its purpose, you need to take extended and purposeful action.

One of the first steps in my mentoring engagements is to have the client begin to understand that their life is a work in progress. The deeper we get into it, the more detailed that understanding becomes.

Lots of advice is available. The common mantra is ‘get a personal vision’. But the truth is that you already have one. Sure, it may be out of focus and counterproductive.

Life coaching can bring some of life’s grandest adventures. The issues at stake are often monumental and, not infrequently, the results can be life changing. In current times such coaching is frequently requested by individuals at the very crossroads of their careers. One such engagement began not long ago.

Thinking about the meanings of word can often lead to a better understanding of our view of the world and place in it. I don’t mean debating the meanings in the dictionary – I mean discovering which of two definitions you prefer and why. Self-knowledge can be increased by acknowledging linguistic preferences.

The human tendency to label – and call the label the meaning of the thing – can prevent us from experiencing the world as we find it. Insisting that the meaning of something is what we say it is is rather like shouting loudly at somebody that is trying to tell us something important and then insisting what we were shouting was their real message.

Socrates observed that ‘a life unexamined is not worth living’. Nowhere is that more true than when we act against our own self-interests and suffer the consequences – pay the bills for our own rash actions.