a map in my own mind

I have been thinking about intuition lately. I have some decisions to make that aren’t life altering, but they are important. My intuition will play a big part in my process.

Once a man I knew fairly spit at me, “Your intuition has landed you on your feet for a long time, but you shouldn’t trust that it will always work!”

Uh? Why not?

It does work for me. And when it doesn’t I do have find a way to fix the mistake. (Yep, it does happen!)

However, I also like to think that if I make a decision I have considered at least some options. I like to think that I’ve made the right choice. (After all, who makes decisions, on purpose, and believes they are wrong?)

How can you tell that your intuition is giving you the straight scoop and not just reflecting some history or gossip or something else that’s really just getting in the way? What is it that makes me just know when something or someone is just right, or just isn’t quite right, or maybe more accurately, isn’t quite as it seems?

Dori Molitor wrote a piece called The Sensory Potential about using all five senses to connect with customers. The article published by The Hub click here. She said:

Intuition is a felt understanding that’s capable of sizing up a brand and judging whether it’s authentic, credible and worthy of our trust — all in the same millisecond. Many times, intuitive feelings seem contrary to reasoned logic, but more often than not they prove to be right. … Our intuition tells us, right away, whether we should trust a brand or not. And if you don’t earn your consumers’ trust, you have nothing!

Authentic is a word that coaches throw around a lot. And it’s one that just feels particularly INauthentic to me. But maybe real authenticity does matter in the recesses of my brain that are my intuition.

I depend on my intuition to make all kinds of decisions in my life, from whether I should fly or drive to a vacation in Vermont to whether this is the right plumber for me to whether these pants really do make me look fat.

It’s your intuition that tells you the red car will make you feel faster. It’s your intuition that tells you that a coach really will help you figure out how to make your life work better. It’s your intuition that tells you that I am – or am not – the right coach for you.

But you have to engage your intuition. You have to consider that that still small voice in side you really has learned something from all those years trapped in your head. Maybe you should let it out for a little exercise.

Call me.. see if I’m the right coach for you.

Filed under Coaching, Deciding: Why is it so hard?
Leave your comment

Finally, it’s beginning to feel like fall around here!
There’s just something about fall that makes it feel like the real beginning of the year. And here it is October…Does it seem like we’re already behind?

Even thought I’m long out of school and my kids are grown, this seems like the beginning of the planning season. And the next season to make plans for is really the end of the year..

OH.. So confusing.. But the bottom line?

Making plans is all about deciding. Making plans before you’re faced with a crisis gives you the greatest opportunities and options.

I know that sometimes having so many choices makes the decision harder. And if you wait til the last minute lots of options are no longer available, so the decision seems easier.… Hmmm, Is THAT why you procrastinate?

Here’s a story.

My husband and I went on a little vacation last week. He finally had the engine of his ’67 Sunbeam Alpine back together and a road trip seemed in order — a short one, all the driving had to be contained in a 100 mile circle within which AAA would tow us home if necessary.

As time approached, we didn’t seem certain we could go. We weren’t sure the car would be ready, so I put off the real reservations until just about a week before the trip. Let me tell you, trying to make reservations at bed and breakfasts on a fall weekend – with only a couple days notice – is pretty darn tough!

That delay definitely eliminated some options. And it did NOT make the planning easier!

So as we come up on the biggest planning time of the year, whether your thing is parties, banquets or vacations, start mapping it out now. You can eliminate some stress if all you do right now is put on your calendar the stuff you know you’re committed to: the office dinner dance, travel plans for Grandma’s at Thanksgiving and your, or your kids’, vacation schedules through the end of the year.

If planning is something that easily gets shoved to your personal back burner, a coach can help.

Call me (410.233.3274)
Email me (click here)
I can help you consider all the bits and pieces of your plans… before the very last minute. Let me help you make a map for the future.
P.S. If you’re still wondering if this sounds good to you, check out these stories in my blog.

• Deciding what to acquire
• How do you know when the decision is the right one?
• Or check out the archives of my posts about deciding in general. Click here

Filed under Coaching, Deciding: Why is it so hard?
Leave your comment

It is with deep incredulity that my family talks about my college independent study in game theory. It was way cool, but pretty out of character given my deep dislike of games in general.

I am also terrible at video games. Maybe it’s an eye hand coordination problem but I couldn’t even make the Donkey Kong jump in the right places. I could, however, play Dr. Mario with complete disregard for everything else going on around me. Heck, I could even play that in my sleep. I’d watch those pills keep dropping for hours. (It is true: You shouldn’t play video games, even solitaire, right before bed. Keeps your brain fired up when it should be slowing down. Read a boring magazine instead!)

However, I am so tired of people, parents mostly, complaining that video games killed play time or that video games made a kid commit unspeakable violence. If your kids can’t tell the difference between video games and reality, then you have a much bigger problem than thinking the games are making him do it.

But I digress.

I was tickled to find that librarians are being encouraged to play video games or at least to acknowledge that people who do play video games view the help desk differently. InsideHigherEd.com is an online source for news, opinion and jobs for all of higher education. The June 25 article reported on the annual meeting of the American Library Association.

Ever watch a little kid with a new video game? Notice him furiously reading the directions first? Na.. didn’t think so.

“With video games, ‘you can play while you are inept,’” said James Paul Gee, the author of Why Video Games Are Good for Your Soul , You can poke around in a video game. Try the same things in different orders and get different results (Or, so I’ve heard). Gee also said there are “lowered consequences of failure.”

I remember my engineer husband’s frustration when my geek son first started tinkering with the insides of computers. “HE DIDN’T READ THE INSTRUCTIONS! He doesn’t understand circuit theory.”

Says the kid, “Don’t worry, Dad. They’re designed to only go in one way!”

On demand learning is a very powerful thing.

Maybe it really doesn’t matter if you know all the rules before you jump in. In fact, what if waiting until you have all the information just keeps you from getting started.

So start now; or start over. Click AA,BB, jump, jump in a different place, see what happens.

If there is no blood, you can always change your mind.

Filed under Deciding: Why is it so hard?, General
Leave your comment

Richard Reardon over at his R&R Business Development Blog started talking about the difference between “wanting change” and “wanting to change.” That’s an interesting distinction.

He suggests that looking at what you have now is the place to look for clues to what you need.

I’m thinking that what I have now is not much help in deciding what to change. I have stuff and I have plans and that’s precisely what keeps me stuck where I am. Perhaps if YOU look at my stuff, YOU might get a clue about what I need. But it’s not your life.

But if I think I want to move to a new house that would indicate a specific change and a plan of action to be developed — lots of stuff has to go away from this house and lots of little things need to get fixed on a more immediate time table.

But if I didn’t know that moving was the change I had in mind, then no amount of looking at my stuff would give me the impetus to rent a dumpster.

So I’m thinking a different first clue is to ask what is it that you don’t want? Then look at the opposite of that and see if that is what you DO want — or if maybe it points at least in the right direction.

Personally, I need pencil and paper to figure out the opposites and that gives me a nice list in the end. And I love lists.

Filed under Coaching, Deciding: Why is it so hard?
Leave your comment

Try practice.

I know that final push to actually be awake in the morning is a struggle for lots of people. My DearHusband hits that snooze alarm the first time at about 5:15 am finally finds himself on the way to the shower between 6:15 and 6:30 (Yes, I KNOW, that’s a lot of snoozes!)

I’m glad my oldest son finally moved out. It was time; he was 20 something. I was tired of trying to set off a nuclear bomb under his bed every morning to get him moving.

Some people with ADHD take their meds an hour before they really have to get up and then, thanks to the better living with chemicals, they can just get up.

But when I saw this suggestion by David Seah over at Better Living Through New Media . He was talking about his experiment to get up every day at 6 am. He’s trying practicing getting up… Well, it boggles my mind. He sourced StevePavlina.com
who suggests:

This is going to sound really stupid, but it works. Practice getting up as soon as your alarm goes off. That’s right — practice. But don’t do it in the morning. Do it during the day when you’re wide awake.

Steve has a couple of articles about getting up and getting going like How to be an early riser and this one that my father would have just loved called Bear Bombing (You just gotta read that! But don’t call children’s services on me.. I only laughed and IMAGINED it would work.) They all sound pretty logical, but I wonder if a mother could make a kid practice? THAT’s the time to get this straight, when the kids are small and require only a shake or two and not a neutron bomb!

I’m not sure it would work. If you’ve tried it an it worked for you, I’d sure like to know about it.

Happy waking.

Kerch

Filed under Deciding: Why is it so hard?, Wake Up
[3] Comments