Relationship has a higher purpose.

• BE what you want to HAVE.
• Limiting perceptions inhibit authentic connection.
• Agreements are a basic requirement for relationship workability.

There you have it. The Readers’ Digest version of the workshop: Love The One You’re With (#5 in our 8-week series in Santa Barbara) lead by 360 coaches Maggie Rauen and Tamra Rutherford.

Relationship.

Could there be a more complex, stimulating and well, upsetting topic? Unfortunately, much of the upset is because we bring a whole bag full of myths, beliefs and considerations which inform our idea of what relationship SHOULD be and as a result, we come into them with unreasonable expectations. Consider this statement:

When I’m in your presence, I want you to love me unconditionally.

Seems reasonable right? I mean, who doesn’t want that? It’s at the core of our personalities to long for acceptance and the safety that results from being free from rejection and disapproval. There’s only one problem.

It’s a trap!!!

It’s virtually impossible for most of us (those not yet enlightened) to love someone unconditionally when we can’t even love ourselves without conditions. You need only look at the self-help section of your local bookstore to realize just how judging we are of our authentic selves. It seems to me that living this belief is disappointment and upset waiting to happen.

Try this: When I’m in your presence, I want you to love yourself unconditionally.

Wow. Now that’s a supportive position if I’ve ever heard one. This is having the deepest possible wish for freedom and fulfillment for my partner. And taken as a guideline, I can return to this intention each time I start making it all-about-me again (which happens a lot BTW).

If relationship has a higher purpose than just getting my needs met, what else could it be about? Yes, I know…romance, companionship, family….all fine expressions of primary relationship. Maybe it’s just me, but I want more. I’m up to something bigger. I want to be conscious. To become all that I can be in this life. I’m a human being….evolving is what we do!

The possibility that I can actually have a partner in this undertaking is thrilling beyond measure. And just what is it that causes me to grow, stretch, and transcend the limits of my personality the most? Yep, conflict. Getting rubbed the wrong way. Now you gotta KNOW that the person who is most likely to push my buttons and call me forth is my mate right? That and my kids (but that’s another post).

I dislike conflict and upset as much as the next gal…but I’m onto myself. I know that it is my partner’s job to annoy the crap out of me (though hopefully not full time). My job? To do the same with him. And what is our intention? To recognize that problems are not really problems. Issues will surface, upsets will come and go – sometimes again and again. What we are actually doing together is inviting the other to become bigger than all that. To choose to love each other again and again – every single time.

If it sounds like every time we have a conflict I am delighted, then I’ve misled you. The truth is I’m practicing. I’m learning. Sometimes I succeed and other times I fail miserably. That’s the point.

Relationship has a higher purpose.

I call it my spiritual practice. My man...he calls it Disneyland for Adults. What do you call it? What context or metaphor describes what you are up to in your relationship? Is it your Workout? Post-graduate school? A Never-ending Gobstopper?
I’d love to know.

~ Tamra Rutherford

Career. Livelihood. Life purpose.
Your life's work.

Without exception, this is the most common reason people hire a coach. If you're in the middle of a career transition or wondering what the heck you're supposed to be doing with your life, Finding the Work You Love is the 4th of 8 workshops we 360 chicks are delivering here in Santa Barbara.

Deep looking, experiential exercises and big fat inquiries are set inside the container of personal responsibility, community and stewardship. This is a huge conversation we're just taking the lid off in this 90-minute session.

We've asked participants to come to the blog in the next week and post their learnings from the life purpose work, and to continue the work they've begun in coaching. Here are their inquiries:

1. What did you discover about your life purpose?
2. What is possible if you were to integrate your purpose with your current work?
3. What one thing could you commit to this week that will make the biggest impact on your life and work?
4. What else?

We'll be checking in throughout the week to see what you've discovered and join the conversation.

Thank you for participating in our community!

Lisa Gates and Elizabeth Gaynes

We are a collective of uncommon coaches committed to a world of personal responsibility and peace.

That's our vision. One conversation at a time, one client at a time. The beat we march to on this Memorial Day and every other day is the beating of the heart.

Three old, never worn out thoughts for this day:

• The first thing to be disrupted by our commitment to nonviolence will be not the system but our own lives. 

James Douglass

• Peace begins when the hungry are fed. 

Anonymous

• As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular. 

Oscar Wilde

Peace.

Coach and exercise scientist Craig Harper's post at Lifehack today -- How to Create a Non-Optional Mindset [about exercise] came wrapped with a magnificent bottom line:

Q. Why do so many of us who want to get in shape (whatever that means for us individually) fail to do so, even though we know exactly what to do, and why we should do it?

A. Because we haven’t made the relevant body-changing habits non-negotiables in our life. On some level we still consider optimal eating and consistent exercise to be optional. Of course we do, otherwise we’d never have the start-stop problem.

To take a look at it from the non-negotiable perspective, here another tweak from Harper:

Q. Why do you take a shower each and every day? (please tell me you shower every day!)

A. Because programmed into your ‘how-to-live-your-life’ hard-drive is a command that says you must wash every day.

Last Thursday, 360 Coaches Andrea Wagner and Beth Gordon lead a workshop [#3 in our 8-part series here in Santa Barbara] called "Using Intuition as a Springboard for Exercise" -- and uncovered what I would call the access to Harper's non-negotiable stance.

Andrea and Beth steeped everyone in their core values, marinated them, tossed out all the "must run 5 miles at least 6 times a week...gotta power lift and do yoga/pilates/nia at the gym daily" and asked people to stop and listen. To their bodies. To their deep internal rhythms. To what's important. And in the listening, people sensed something, felt something shift. They felt their bodies connecting to an intuitive nudge that sparked a partnership between movement and who they are.

The result? The energy nearly busted down the doors.

• One person discovered that she had always exercised alone in the gym, but what she really craved was connection and being outdoors. She shifted her exercise focus to parnering with others on front country hikes and beach walks.
• Another person was forcing herself into fitness workouts on treadmills and spin classes, but in truth craved solitude and spiritual connection. She's committed to returning to meditation and yoga, with an occasional spin tossed in.

If we toss out the dictates that exercise has to look a certain way and conform to some external standard, what's possible now?

With access to values as the conduit to a non-negotiable exercise mindset, we have a direct, intuitive, physical response when we do that human thang--fall off our commitment -- but now the path is well worn and we'll be able to make our way back quickly. The pain of not honoring our values will be intolerable.

In response to several emails about co-active coaching, we've updated our "what is coaching" page. Thanks for keeping us on our toes. Your answers follow...

what's your purpose?

You've come to coaching because you want something: more money, less stress, better organization, right work, improved communication, someone to love, better health, time for travel. And it's very likely you have a secret wish too: to publish a book, run for public office, sail around the world, launch a nonprofit, swim with dolphins.

what are your big questions?

Coaching asks three questions: "Who am I?" "What do I want?" and "How do I get there?" Coaching bridges the gap between where you are now, and the life you envision. Being-centered and goal-oriented, coaching inspires you walk the talk, be accountable, and to make conscious, powerful choices that bring forth blue-sky results.

what is co-active coaching?

Coaching is either directive or non-directive. The non-directive model places more emphasis on the learning process with the coach acting as a catalyst for your growth. For the most part, 360 Alliance Coaching uses the co-active coaching model developed by the The Coaches Training Institute of San Rafael, CA and is a non-directive approach. The co-active model shares many characteristics of other non-directive methods, but what sets it apart is the strong emphasis placed on relationship--an emphasis that stems from the four cornerstones of co-active coaching, as well as the designed alliance of the model.

what are the cornerstones and how do they deliver?

You, the client, are naturally creative, resourceful and whole. You are not broken, you do not need to be fixed. Instead, you are amazing, unique and completely capable of finding the answers to your life's questions. You only need a coach to shine the flashlight in places you might not be looking, to point out gaps you may not see, and to advocate for your fulfillment with a straightforward relentlessness.

You create your own unique agenda. In co-active coaching, there's nothing cookie-cutter. This allows you to focus on development that is meaningful to you and, therefore, more likely to have an authentic and lasting impact.

Co-active coaching addresses your whole life. To be truly satisfied, your life, as a whole, needs to feel like it works, like it's congruent. No matter what your leading desire is, you can count on that work to send transformative ripples across the landscape of your entire life.

The co-active coach dances in the moment. This may sound odd but it’s a very powerful technique that encourages and supports blue sky thinking, taking you to creative, surprising and resourceful places.

what is the 360 designed alliance?

The designed alliance is the co-created relationship between coach and client. It is a shared commitment between you and your coach. The designed alliance is important because coaching balances support with creating sufficient challenge for learning--and a deep level of trust is needed for this dynamic to work. When this type of alliance exists, individuals are able to stretch beyond their current level of capability.

uncommon coaching for uncommon results

Co-active coaching takes courage. We promise to challenge your reality in service of revealing the possibilities that lie just beyond your perceived limits. We expect you to bring a lot to the table and be willing to stretch. The pay-off is immense: increased fulfillment, a greater sense of purpose and a toybox of possibility.

click here to try a sample session

Curious? In your first session you get a full-bodied taste of coaching. Bring something to the table--a place in your life you'd love to see movement--and we'll help you launch the revolution in your evolution.

When my husband and I got our first apartment in LA, we moved in with some clothes in a suitcase, a TV, a bed with no frame and an ironing board. The radio sat on the carpet and siphoned off the only outlet in the living room, down at the end where the window faced 6th and Lafayette. It was as if we were trying to fill space with sound, or hoping to see an orchestra or a dance troupe march in at any moment, yet weeks passed with no change in our furniture uncollection. In the evenings we screeched open the ironing board and ate dinner, standing.

Doesn't that sound youthful and nostalgic? Looking back, I can make a case for youthful, but the nostalgic part is cloudy. We were on a budget, and we had a standard, an ethic about furniture: We would buy what we would buy if we had a million dollars, but we'd get it used, incredibly cheap, yet cool, antiquey, retro, something hip and amazing. It was hard to find all those adjectives in one garage sale, so weeks would pass between pieces. And even though we lived in that apartment for only six months, the collection process continued in a similar vein for years.

What I see now is the schism between the drive for perfection and the fear of failure, and the cost was huge. Most of our friends were like us--waiter/actors, artist/secretaries, writer/marketers--people who'd be happy to share a salad and a beer over an ironing board ANY time. But nobody was invited to our apartment. There wasn't any furniture.

Many clients arrive at the coaching table with this perfection/failure monster wrapped around their necks. People dying to make huge splash with an idea or a product or a move, but afraid to make a mess, choose the wrong thing, get their hands dirty, and be known for being human. It's cost them dearly over the years--jobs, marriages, children, friendships, money.

If you're about to make a shift or a change, or unravel a pattern like this, especially a life-sucking, job-stealing, joy-stomping routine, it's going to be uncomfortable at first, and definitely messy and confusing at times. But here's the real deal: when you're on your deathbed, you aren't going to be wishing you had the right furniture for your wake. Know wuddimean?

Loving the day,

Lisa 

I like to call to-do lists too much ado lists. Lemme splain.

My partner Maggie and I just held a workshop last week about time, that illusory squiggly thing we think we we need to control and manage. But we didn't talk about time management, and we didn't talk about productivity strategies, and we didn't talk about technology. We figured we all have that handled. What we talked about was being. Who we're being when we're flooring it down the freeway, showing up late and pissy, commanding our children like they're recruits, forgetting birthdays and I love yous. We talked about being, who we want to be, and about letting our values write our to-do lists.

We asked a provocative question or two:

• Where is your real life, the one you want to set to blaze?
• Where is that book you meant to write? That marriage you meant to tend?
• Where is life you will say you shoulda lived when you're breathing your last breath?
• Where is that life, your core values married to your big fat vision, showing up on your everyday walkin' around schedule?

We are such good storytellers, but sometimes we forget we're the ones inventing the tale. So this week, how about a little challenge. What if you shake out your schedule like a sandy beach blanket and fill it with nothing but what really matters.

Okay, one last gasp for objections:

But I have to pick up the dry cleaning, schedule six meetings, take my kids to ballet and violin and soccer and buy new socks for everyone and finish the budget, and empty the cupboards for the canned food drive and fly to Toronto on Friday, and conduct 12 interviews, and if I have time I'll sit down at my potter's wheel, and if I have time I'll plan that trip to Zimbabwe.

Oh how deliciously human we all are. What's really important here?

Loving the day,

Lisa

More of this...?  Much more of this?

Imagine yourself ten years from now.  You are at the top of your game, your happiest.  Everything has worked out in the best possible way and you are full with life's pleasures.  You have everything you want, everything you dream of.  On a scale of 1 to 10 your life is a 10++.

Now imagine that your future self has a magic phone.  She picks it up and calls you.  What does she say?  What advice does she have for the road ahead?  What wisdom does she share?  What's most important for you to know today?  Listen closely.  

"Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits."

Satchel Paige had it down. And yes, it's really that simple.
Go ahead, right now...and remember, the clock is just an illusion.

Pause.
Breathe.
Listen to your breathing.
Listen to the sounds in and around you.
Connect.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat. All right, you're free to go.

Lisa

Join us for Pay it Forward Friday--it's coaching for a cause.

In Santa Barbara we’ve had a big, delicious breath of Spring this week and man it stirs things up! I’ve been itching to clean out closets, slap on a fresh coat of paint and plant something in the dirt. Funny how a few days of blissful sunshine can do that.

Boing!

I met with a delicious group of women this week for a vision workshop. While everyone was checking in about what they were wanting from the day, one woman mentioned that Spring feels like a good time to start fresh, plant new seeds (so to speak) and brush off the old thinking. Wow. What cool insight. And based on the reaction from the group, she's not alone in that thinking.

So, here's an invitation for you all, no matter the weather in your parts, to do your own Spring clean-up.  Roll up your sleeves, clean out the cobwebs and clear the way for some new vision. Whatever your process, journal, action, conversation.....consider:

• What areas of your life could use a good Spring cleaning?  Take inventory.
• What’s working?  Be grateful.
• Shine a light on the areas that are collecting dust.
• What needs tending, nurturing, cultivating?   
• What’s dangling and calling out for completion?   
• What's ready for the giveaway pile?
• Step back and admire your work.  Celebrate. 

If you're inspired, share your findings....   In joy, Elizabeth