Holistic Coaching Solutions

Your attitude determines your altitude in business and in life. You can't change someone else's attitude for them. But this powerful adage is a great reminder that you can put in front of anyone who needs an attitude adjustment. I want to talk about a few of the many ways each of us can develop a winning attitude every day. It's what leaders do. Marcus Aurelius, the great philosopher who ruled the Roman Empire, said it simply: "Our life is what our thoughts make it." Dale Carnegie, speaking to that quote said: "Yes, if we think happy thoughts, we will be happy. If we think miserable thoughts, we will be miserable. If we think fear thoughts, we will be fearful. If we think sickly thoughts we probably will be ill. If we think failure, we will certainly fail. If we wallow in self-pity, everyone will want to shun us and avoid us." Am I advocating a Pollyanna attitude toward all our problems? No. Life isn't that simple. But I am advocating in th...

Ever eaten something that made you break into rashes? How about itchiness of the throat, around the eyes, your ears, and even your hands and feet? These are actually symptoms of food allergies. Food allergies are a condition where the body’s immune system becomes hypersensitive. As a result of this hypersensitivity, it mistakenly believes that food entering the body is harmful and creates antibodies to counteract it. So, the next time you eat that food, the immune system releases massive amounts of these antibodies and other chemicals, including histamine, as a protective measure against the “harmful” substance.  The release of these chemicals is what triggers your food allergies to act up. The allergic symptoms could affect any part of the body, but mostly the respiratory system, gastrointestinal tract, skin, and the cardiovascular system. An estimated 11 million Americans suffer from true food allergies, with symptoms ranging from the mildly inconvenient to uncomfort...

It is estimated that our brains receive information through our senses that result in some four billion neuron impulses per second. Of these four billion pieces of information we are only consciously aware of about 2,000. That's only 0.00005%. It's happening to you right now. I bet, until I mention it now, that you were not aware of the feel of your clothes on your skin. Or, aware of the noises in the background. Or,  aware of the object just inside of your peripheral vision. Until I mentioned them you were giving your full attention to something else. If you had to be fully aware of all the information that you receive all of the time you probably would be so overwhelmed that you wouldn't be able to function. The unwanted information is filtered out through a process of Deletion, Distortion and Generalization. This filtering process is driven largely by our Beliefs of how things are at that time. While this can be very helpful in keeping our brains from exploding...

Making any decision without having all of the information and facts beforehand can be very tough. I spoke with a young man recently and he told me that some of his professors had changed the rules on him in the administration of his classes. The syllabuses of a couple of his classes had been altered, which switched exam dates. He was also notified of these changes after the semester's grace period. The grace period in which he could get his tuition money back after dropping a course had passed. Because of the changes, he would have two to three exams on one day. I agreed with him that it was not a fair thing for them to do and that he wasn't given all of the facts in order to make an adequate decision. This young man had to make a decision to take the courses the way they had been altered or to drop the courses, forfeit his tuition money and delay another semester until graduation. It was interesting because I was about the same age as this young man when one of my underg...

1. WORK WITH THE END IN MIND OR FOCUS ON SUCCESS Beginning with the end in mind is the endowment of imagination. If you are the programmer, write the program says goal expert Stephen R. Covey. Goals help us to focus and the quality of our attention is enhanced by having a project so cool and interesting that we can't help but make a leap. Let's say you want to organize your workspace so that everyone is inspired to do their best work. The in-between steps like ergonomic concerns, planning comfortable lighting in and of itself can seem mundane but, joined together they become a bigger accomplishment and by doing so, asks us to spice up our expectations and upgrade who we are. Focus on success and keep in mind how you want things to end up And you'll soon enough be successful.    Give your project a title    What needs to be done by when    How would you like things to end up    Identify upbeat reasons for pursuing the goal 2. RAISE...

Who would forget the ever-famous line of Peter Parker's uncle Ben, "With great power comes great responsibility". The society expects Spiderman, a comic book, TV, and movie superhero, to be responsible for saving his town, or even the world, in some instances, from evil because he has super powers. From all the episodes he appeared in, he never let us down. With the power he possesses, he makes sure to be responsible in using it for the good of the people around him. Leadership is not at all different from being superheroes. Yes, you may not have super powers like Superman and Spiderman, but you have the authority to lead other people towards success. This is so much greater and stronger since it is a power that can be used by real people in this real world. Hence, being a leader requires a great sense of responsibility, the second quality a successful leader should attain. The power to lead your people towards achieving your vision comes with responsibilities ...

Meditation has been practiced around the world for thousands of years. It is a technique used to quiet the mind, the body and release stress. It can also bring focus, clarity and often after meditating, problems that you have been struggling with miraculously become solved. Meditation has also been known to inspire people to write and to spur lucrative business ideas as your subconscious comes to light.     One simple form of meditation requires you to sit in a quiet room, either on a pillow or cross-legged on the floor, or in a comfortable chair making sure your spine is straight. It is advised that you use the same place every day. It is also suggested that you personalize your spot by beautifying it with candles, flowers, and pictures of the people that you love.    The idea is to sit quietly with your eyes closed and focus on a point inside of your forehead. Try not to think of anything in particular but, don't try 'not' to think either. Allow your mind t...

I aim to become the president of my country. I have the destiny of becoming the greatest scientist. I will one day be the richest person in the world. I aim to..., and so goes the list of ambitions of people. Nobody remembers that the final goal for each one of us is going back to earth. Let us talk more about ambitions. Are ambitions good or bad? This is difficult to answer, isn't it? To be an ambitious person must be very good. With ambitions a person strives to achieve a great feat. Most of us have very big ambitions and a few very small ones as well. It all depends on our contentment. What will make us feel happy? What will make us feel worthy, and what will make us feel powerful? It's all about what we want from life. If you want money at any cost, you will compromise with all other values and try to make more money. But if your ambition is to become an honest person and live a God fearing life, no amount of money can attract you to do any wrongs. Ambitions therefor...

An important part of success in life is the ability to lead. It is important that we not only be able to lead others but be willing to lead ourselves. No one succeeds in life by simply following others. Sometimes we simply must strike a bold new path for ourselves. Being a good leader is more than simply being at the forefront of the crowd. A leader must act. Too often in America, we simply accept that someone looks or sounds like a leader and too rarely do we actually look at the actions that leader performs and that is a true test of leadership. However, in order to become good leaders ourselves, we need to concentrate on actions rather than simple appearances. The title of this article refers to eight steps, but do not think of these as progressive steps like so many recipes or instruction manuals describe. These are not the only steps either. Instead, think of these as actions that you will take on a regular basis. First, be alert to new potentials. "Reality" is ...

When we spend our lives merely surviving, life can start to seem a little empty and  pointless . Nevertheless, this is exactly how many of us live: we work for eight hours or more a day and then we come home feeling too tired and exhausted to do much of anything with our time. So, we sit and watch TV. The same thing repeats and repeats and the most excitement we have is a holiday once a year to look forward to. Is that really living? Here are four simple changes that can make your life more meaningful: Learning Constantly learning is a great way to give life more meaning and direction. Ultimately, one of the things that the brain craves most is growth. If it isn’t challenged to learn and grow, then it will shrink and we will become set in our ways. Make it your job to constantly be learning new skills and pursuits. That can be related to your career, a hobby, or even a new language! Relationships Likewise, relationships are one of the things that we really need to...

Leadership can be a very challenging task. As leaders we don't always get to choose who is on our team. In fact very often a leader inherits a team, of which most of the members have been there far longer than the leader, and may even know more about the work than the leader. Whatever the situation, one of the responsibilities of a leader is to motivate the team to all work together towards the common goal. This can be a daunting challenge. So often the team is comprised of very diverse members, each with their own strengths, weaknesses, and work styles. The team dynamics are also often complicated by internal disagreements and personal conflicts. The leader, not only has to work with this group of people, but also needs to achieve the results expected by their superiors. Leaders can greatly benefit by being able to identify the types of personality characteristics of team members. By understanding the basic personality types, the leader can use individual strengths of member...

The World Health Organization (WHO) describes health as the condition of perfect bodily, spiritual, and social well-being and not solely the absence of illness and injury. As described by the WHO, how many of us feel emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually healthy during this pandemic? When we're able to go back to work, some of us will be in structures called sick buildings. We go home to care for families so tired we are almost unable to function and we increasingly lose our connection with any sense of our place in the universe. How do we reclaim our life and start to think that our life matters and that we are important in the overall scheme of things? One way of doing this is to create our own sanctuary/sacred space. Creating our own sacred space restores our peace of mind and enables us to stand back from the turmoil in our lives in order to provide a place where we can reconnect with our sense of self and reclaim our power. Exploration of sanctuary is to cre...

Some words about anti-aging and disease prevention The aging process is for the greater part no mystery anymore. It contributes to the daily damages done on a macroscopic level to tissue, cellular and your genes. These add  up as the years are passing. These damages have specific causes like oxidative effects, sun damage, mechanical wear and tear, psychological stress, lack of some nutritional components and too much of others, such as fat storage. Another component of aging is the reduction of the telomere chains at the chromosome ends, as each cell division occurs. However, the body has means to repair these ends again, with an enzyme called telomerase. The rapidity of the aging process depends on lack of efficiency in this repair process. The above mention aging causes also slow down this repair process. The factors causing aging, also causes other diseases like cancer and  coronary heart disease. Both aging and these diseases can to a great extent be prevented with t...

If you are like me, you've often wished there were more hours in a day instead of just 24. There never seems to be enough time to get everything done that you want. Since we just have about 16 hours a day not counting sleep time, it's important how we use the time we have. On average, people waste about 2 hours a day. This is mainly from poor planning. If a person is unorganized, they waste time trying to find things, they miss appointments, they try to multi task, doing multiple things inefficiently. Good time management is a major building block to success. Oftentimes, it's not how much time we spend working but how efficiently we do the work. The key to successful time management is careful planning and setting priorities. Plan your day, your week, and your month in advance. Know when things need to be done. A great way to buy time is to prioritize your task. Don't do more than one thing at a time. There are some things that do not require concentrated menta...