It all started with Monica. She’s a silent ninja coach that I met a little over a week ago. I was assisting in a coaching course and she was coaching me. Her job was to push her client (me) to the point of being fired. In other words to really challenge me. I can’t recall the exact place where the topic started but somewhere we ended up here.
Monica “What do you want”
Julie “To live bigger”
Monica “What does that look like”
Julie …little mice are running in their little treadmill in my head as the brain cells are firing…thinking…thinking
Monica….staring at me with these ninja eyes and I would swear she has mice mirroring my mice. I mean wow this gal does mirroring like I’ve never seen before.
Julie “To ask myself everyday how can I live big today”
Monica “Great. What else”
Julie “To reflect each day what opportunity I missed not living big”
Monica … stealth ninja mirroring
Julie “No that is too negative. I don’t want to focus on how I missed out. I’ll reflect on how I showed up. What did I do to live bigger today. ”
Monica “Great. How often will you do this”
Julie “Hmm. Maybe 30 days. But that doesn’t seem long enough.”
Monica “How about you do this until January 1 – New Years Day.”
Julie …secretly thinking shit, shit, shit that is not 30 days that is more like 120 days or more but somehow the sparkle in Monica the dancing ninja and her challenge has me saying “Yes. That sounds great. And I will not read the past blog posts until New Years Day. I will simply post and then let it go”
Monica “Great. How will I know you’ve done this”
Julie “I will write it in a blog and give you access.” Crap. What have I agreed to.
And so here we are. And while it has taken me a week to finally get myself organized I’ve been waking up each day considering how will I live big today and finding that little moment of pause setting me on a course that is very fulfilling. Day 1 I took the time to act on an impulse which had been a dream I’d been chewing on for a couple of years but had done little to make it materialize. I walked right up to a lady that I greatly admire and just stated simply “I want to work for you some day”. We spent a minute conspiring on what that might look like and how that could happen. Sweetness.
That set the ball in motion then then sign up for my own personal certification which frankly I never had given much thought before. I wasn’t against the idea but moving forward with leadership development was more of my focus. But now that a new destiny has been put into focus and this is one of the key steps to get there I find myself quite excited by the opportunity. First I’ll have to get 5 clients. I largely only work with my direct team, peers and clients in my coaching with work. And I love how the CTI co-active model shows up in those relationships. But I had already found that it was easy to slip out of that model and be sucked into the monotonous conversations of complaining about everything and doing nothing to get out of the slump. Now I’m re-energized to bring my better game back into those conversations.
The next five days continued with having difficult but honest conversations with senior leaders that I report to, with clients, with team members and even with family. I signed up for certification. I figured out how I would finance both certification and taking Leadership course with CTI. And sure there were a couple of days where I likely held back but that’s OK.
Most importantly I finally took the time to investigate web site/blogging software, set it up and write this entry post. So now I have all in place for my daily blogging. I do not really expect many people to read this but just in case I will be vague on the people I interact with to protect their identity. And really this is meant to be about how I am living bigger. Not about them as interesting as those stores may be.
So here we are…as promised I will not read posts after they have been posted until January 1, 2015.