Archive for the “Personal Growth” Category
Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II in Executive Coaching, Life Coaching, Personal Growth, Thought Pieces, tags: adviser, advisory board, angel investor, board of directors, CEO, chairman, coaching, consulting, director, Executive Coaching, Governance, investing, investor, Leadership, leadership assessment, leadership coaching, leadership development, leadership styles, Life Coaching, management assessment, non-profit, nonprofit, Personal Growth, personal vision, self-improvement, spirituality, turnaround, Turnaround Management, Venture Capital
Dr. Earl R. Smith II
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
www.Dr-Smith.com
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. But you do have one. Many would call it your ‘self image’. It is how you decide what you will do and what you will not do. This self image sets your expectations. It holds your private vision of you in the world. It is there with you when you wake up every morning and as you go to sleep each night. So, the question is not whether you have a personal vision. The question is ‘do you have the right personal vision?” Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II in Life Coaching, Personal Growth, Thought Pieces, tags: adviser, advisory board, board of directors, CEO, chairman, coaching, consulting, director, Executive Coaching, Governance, Leadership, leadership assessment, leadership coaching, leadership development, leadership styles, Life Coaching, management assessment, non-profit, nonprofit, Personal Growth, spirituality, turnaround, Turnaround Management
Dr. Earl R. Smith II
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
www.Dr-Smith.com
It’s not the compass that finds your true north – you need to find the compass that points to your true north. Short of that, every other compass will send you in the wrong direction.
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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. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II in Life Coaching, Personal Growth, tags: adviser, advisory board, board of directors, CEO, chairman, coaching, consulting, director, Executive Coaching, Governance, Leadership, leadership assessment, leadership coaching, leadership development, leadership styles, Life Coaching, management assessment, non-profit, nonprofit, Personal Growth, spirituality, turnaround, Turnaround Management
Dr. Earl R. Smith II
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
www.Dr-Smith.com
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.
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Language can be a complicated thing – particularly when it comes to those curious words that have multiple meanings. It’s not so much the existence of the meanings that intrigues me but the choices that people make. How a person chooses to use a particular word can tell you a great deal about who they are and how they see the world and their place in it. Take, for instance, the word ‘apprehension’. I’ve noticed that few people actually use the word – perhaps because of the complex of meanings that surround it – but, when it is used, it generally is deployed in description of a situation. Let’s start with three definitions: Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II in Life Coaching, Personal Growth, tags: adviser, advisory board, board of directors, CEO, chairman, coaching, consulting, director, Executive Coaching, Governance, Leadership, leadership assessment, leadership coaching, leadership development, leadership styles, Life Coaching, management assessment, non-profit, nonprofit, Personal Growth, spirituality, turnaround, Turnaround Management
Earl R. Smith II
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
www.Dr-Smith.com
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.
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The search for meaning is one of life’s continuing journeys. The suspicion that meaning is lacking can bring on a deep dread that can haunt us all. The dreary landscape of the suspicion of no meaning can lead us to make up meaning. Buddhists call this ornamentation – the creation of bright and pretty things to enliven the world as think we find it. But the world we think we find is often a world we dream while asleep. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II in Blog, Executive Coaching, Personal Growth, tags: adviser, advisor, advisory board, board of directors, CEO, chairman, coaching, consulting, director, Executive Coaching, Governance, Leadership, leadership assessment, leadership coaching, leadership development, leadership styles, Life Coaching, management assessment, non-profit, nonprofit, Personal Growth, spirituality, turnaround, Turnaround Management
Dr. Earl R. Smith II
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
www.Dr-Smith.com
When you awake each morning, the day presents you with literally thousands of possibilities. Human existence is chocked full of possibilities. But the important questions is, what is probable? And the more important question is, how can you make the right possible things probable – how can you select the right probabilities from all those possibilities? This is one of those areas when more education can be a real liability.
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Executive coaching my way leads me to work with highly educated and literate people. Most of my clients have a Master’s degree. In some ways, working with these people is a joy. For example, they have been trained to understand and work with complex ideas. Their grasp of the language is such that conversations about complex ideas are possible. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II in Life Coaching, Personal Growth, tags: adviser, advisor, advisory board, board of directors, CEO, chairman, coaching, consulting, director, Executive Coaching, Governance, Leadership, leadership assessment, leadership coaching, leadership development, leadership styles, Life Coaching, management assessment, non-profit, nonprofit, Personal Growth, spirituality, turnaround, Turnaround Management
Earl R. Smith II
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
www.Dr-Smith.com
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.
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“It’s what you do without realizing it that can really mess things up.”
That’s the way one of my early mentors used to put it. Jim was constantly pointing out those things I did without thinking – and the effect of my having done them on future prospects. Now don’t get me wrong, Jim was not an advocate of “staying low and not making waves”. Far from that, he made more than his share of waves and was a real change agent in his business and personal relationships. He insisted that you had to realize the likely impact of doing this or being that way on what you wanted to get out of life and the people around you. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II in Blog, Personal Growth, tags: adviser, advisor, advisory board, Alice, Alice in Wonderland, board of directors, CEO, chairman, coaching, consulting, director, Executive Coaching, Governance, Leadership, leadership assessment, leadership coaching, leadership development, leadership styles, Life Coaching, management assessment, non-profit, nonprofit, Personal Growth, spirituality, turnaround, Turnaround Management, Wonderland
Dr. Earl R. Smith II
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
www.Dr-Smith.com
Doggerel you say? Incoherent mutterings. Nothing much to pay attention to. Foolish person – there is all of life – the whole deep meaning of it – in the fart of a flea. You just have to learn how to listen!
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There is no freedom like being able to say what you truly mean – not what others want you appear to mean – nor what you might say in the throes of an adolescent tantrum – but to clearly say in a measured fashion exactly what you mean. Here’s the rabbit hole – down we go. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II in Blog, Personal Growth, tags: adviser, advisor, advisory board, board of directors, CEO, chairman, coaching, consulting, director, Executive Coaching, Governance, Leadership, leadership assessment, leadership coaching, leadership development, leadership styles, Life Coaching, management assessment, non-profit, nonprofit, Personal Growth, spirituality, turnaround, Turnaround Management
Dr. Earl R. Smith II
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
www.Dr-Smith.com
We look in them every day – and use them as metaphors for achieving deeper self-knowledge. Every person we meet is one and what they show us can be far more valuable than any highly polished surface.
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I won’t sugarcoat it – mentoring can bring some very aggravating experiences. Sometimes it takes forever to achieve just a small illumination. Then there are the times – backsliding – when months of work seems to be washed away by a recidivist tendency. But then there are the other kinds that make the occasional frustration fade into the background. Let me tell you about one of these experiences. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II in Blog, Personal Growth, tags: adviser, advisor, advisory board, board of directors, CEO, chairman, coaching, consulting, director, Executive Coaching, Governance, Leadership, leadership assessment, leadership coaching, leadership development, leadership styles, Life Coaching, management assessment, non-profit, nonprofit, Personal Growth, spirituality, turnaround, Turnaround Management
Dr. Earl R. Smith II
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
www.Dr-Smith.com
Understanding where the other person is coming from radically increases the probability that you will understand what they are trying to say to you.
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I recently met with a young entrepreneur – let’s call him X – well, to be technically accurate, a wannabe entrepreneur – he had never successfully built a business before. The meeting was a chance one at a networking event but my reputation for helping build business had preceded me. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Dr. Earl R. Smith II in Blog, Personal Growth, tags: adviser, advisor, advisory board, board of directors, CEO, chairman, coaching, consulting, director, Executive Coaching, Governance, Leadership, leadership assessment, leadership coaching, leadership development, leadership styles, Life Coaching, management assessment, non-profit, nonprofit, Personal Growth, spirituality, turnaround, Turnaround Management
Dr. Earl R. Smith II
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
www.Dr-Smith.com
To accumulate means that now there is more than before and then there will be more than now. It is a simple idea – then why do some people have so much trouble applying it to their lives?
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Some years back I had a coaching engagement with a senior consultant. This person had risen to near the top of his profession and was, by most indicators, a thought leader in his field. After an increasingly successful career spanning almost twenty years, he began to wonder ‘what’s it all about’? Read the rest of this entry »
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