Ann Badillo Coaching

February 2009 -- Self Love

You cannot have love for anything outside of yourself if you do not feel that same love for yourself. Your life is a mirror of relationships. Every person in your life is a mirror of you. Every love in your life is a reflection of your ability to love. In essence, your life only has meaning in proportion to the love you will allow in your own heart. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was known to say, "I love you. But that's no concern of yours." 

True, real, innocent love flows from a fountain within your heart – fill your heart with love and the world outside you sees it and feels it. Your love showers upon everyone you touch, but only if the fountain is filling you up. Constrict that fountain to a trickle and there's nothing left for the rest of the world. Is filling your car with gas selfish? Is filling your lungs with air self-centered? Actually, quite the contrary . . . you breathe so you can live. 

Loving yourself is no different. Close your eyes and repeat the affirmation: My life only has meaning in proportion to the love I allow in my heart. Now that you believe you are indeed pure love, let's make a difference. With all the commitments, intentions, and vows going on in the world right now, we have the ability to ACT right now and transform the planet. 

So TODAY PERFORM ONE ACT OF LOVE. Kiss someone, give a gift to someone, smile at someone, call someone, give an extra tip to someone, wink at someone, hug someone, praise someone, email someone, give a piece of chocolate to someone, help someone grieve, text someone a kind word, forgive someone. 

photo credit:Painting by Rita Loyd

Excerpt from Namaste Newsletter, Chopra Center 

3 Words for your 2009 Goals

Take the Chris Brogan Challenge and look for three words that will help you frame your challenges and opportunities for 2009.If you want to try the process, it works something like this: think of how you want to be successful in 2009. Then, try to think in even broader terms. Extrapolate on the broader terms, and find one word to hang the idea on.

Try setting your three words far out on the horizon, but such that
they can lead you to your goals every day. Meaning, can you use the same word to get you started, but have it still be relevant when you’re almost at the big goal?

So, what are your three words?

Here are mine:
Swim--the current, in projects and revenue
Grace--patience and compassion with family and friends
Lands--see new lands, 5th decade, open space, new territory, new geos, new eyes

January 2009 Open Coaching Calls

2008 Year in Review

• What are your successes? Personal, Professional,
• What are your wins and victories?
• What are your strengths you learned about in 2007?
• What do you leave behind in the year that has passed?
• What do you wish to take with you?
• What does your inner guide and navigation have to say?

2009 Planning & Goal Setting

• What do you want to create this year?
• What are your intentions?
• What's calling you?
• What's interesting?
• What are you attracted to or energized by?
• What projects or goals do you have for yourself this year?
• How would you like to grow your ______ ? What kind/types of customers/relationships? Revenue goal? Time commitments?
• What does the personal/professional balance look like?
• What are the agreements between you and ______?

January 2009 Open Coaching Calls

Friday, January 2nd , 12:00 -1:00

Friday, January 9th, 8:15 - 9:15

Call in Number: 646 444 5502
Participant PIN: 696972

Join us!

All are welcome. Drop me an email  ann@badillo.com and let me know you are coming.

2008 Year In Review

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

As we end the year I want to share this set of questions for us to reflect upon.

This last year --In myself, my relationships, my work, and my community:

1. Where have I been strengthened this year?

2. What has softened in me this year?

3. What has deepened (integrated or fallen into place) this year?

4. What has opened (what's new, what have I learned, where am I being stretched) in my nature this year?

Source: Angeles Arrien 

Winter Solstice Open Coaching Call:

Sunday, December 21st, 9:00 - 10:00 AM

CANCELED

Call in Number: 646 444 5502
Participant PIN: 696972

Join us!

All are welcome. Drop me an email  ann@badillo.com and let me know you are coming. We will reflect on these valuable questions as a community of practice.

Planting Lettuce

When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like the lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and argument. That is my experience. No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change.

—Thich Nhat Hanh —

Instruction Manuals for Living

From Daily Om
Lessons of Discovery
Instruction Manuals for Living

Depending on what stage we are in our lives, we can sometimes feel like we ought to know more about who we are or how to live. We may even berate ourselves for making the same mistakes, or for just not "getting it," whatever "it" may be. We wonder how our lives would be now, if only we had “known better.” During moments like these, it is important to remember that none of us are born with instruction manuals and that learning lessons is a lifelong journey. 

Inherent to our being born is that we are here to observe, learn, and grow. Accompanying this is a built-in guarantee that there will be mistakes and misadventures along the way. And while it is only natural that we may sometimes become overwhelmed, especially when the lessons keep coming, it is important to remember that learning to understand yourself and your world is an ongoing and active process where the journey is more important than the destination. Every lesson is intended so you can become more of who you are. And as you grow through this self-discovery, you begin to create your own instruction manual. The "how’s" and "why’s" are yours to discover, and part of the beauty of being alive is that these rules are always changing. 

If you feel that you would like to explore what your personal instruction manual may already say, then try writing down in order some of the significant events that have happened to you. It’s also important to take note of what you learned from each one. When you are done, you may be surprised to discover how much you are always growing, and that every lesson learned always informs the next. That being said, there is never any need to be hard on yourself or think that you should have it all figured out. We always know as much as we’re meant to know at that moment, and growing into our fullness is a process that unfolds in divine timing. You and your life are beautiful works in progress. Discover yourself and embrace your life’s lessons, and your instruction manual will create itself.

What do you think?

Familiar and Timeless, Peter Drucker’s 5 questions

The nature of business organizations has changed dramatically over the past few decades. Today, employers and employees both understand few show up thinking they will collect their ‘gold watch’ after 25 years of service. Instead, individuals are responsible to carve and erect their career paths.

Individuals need to keep themselves engaged in a work life that might span more than 50 years. And, to do this requires a deep understanding of self.

Peter Drucker said, “Only when you operate from a combination of your strengths and self knowledge can you achieve true and lasting excellence”. This familiar but timeless wisdom holds truer today. So, let’s revisit Drucker’s 5 questions first introduced in the article, Managing Oneself, HBR, 1999:

• What are my strengths? (how do you know, what do you do to strengthen them and how do you use this knowledge to establish, and manage relationships?)
• How do I work? (how do you learn? are you a reader or listener? do you prefer solo to groups?)
• What are my values? (and are they consistent with your organization’s values/)
• Where do I belong? (is my role the optimal, the best fit for me?)
• What can I contribute? (how will I use my self-knowledge and strengths to make a difference in my organization, community, society?)

Without these answers, most people waste time improving skill areas where they have little competence, or try to modify ‘personality’ traits that cannot be changed. Drucker and authors that are more recent advise us to play to our strengths. What do you think? What stories can you share?

Source: Fast Company

 

Five Tips for August Renewal

Summer is traditionally a time reserved for relaxing with family and friends.  Summer is also great time in the year to engage in a bit of self renewal, to 'press pause button' and step back from one's daily activities to notice how 2008 is rolling out. There's no better time to recalibrate before the manic Fall starts.

Five Tips for August Renewal

1. Make a list of activities you loved when you were under the age of 25, post your list in a visible place for a few days -- then pick one activity to resurrect and try it on for the month.

2. Take a mini-vacation that requires only a little planning -- make it within driving distance of home and somewhere you haven't been.

3. Take a day long silent retreat in you home -- no email, no phones, no television, just YOU.

4. Scan 2008, looking back and looking at the months ahead -- create two columns on a blank page -- one side for what's working and the other for what needs adjusting -- brainstorm on ways to make small adjustments.

5. Make time for dreaming big dreams without any requirements to act on them --- just allow a bit of space to wander in unknown territory!  Who knows where you might lead yourself.

Source: The Hudson Institute of Santa Barbara

The Power of Appreciation

"Appreciation is a powerful tool that has scientifically validated benefits. This one emotion has shown to positively impact our entire system- from our attitudes and immune system to our heart and mental clarity."

HeartMath

clipped from mail.google.com "Appreciation is a powerful tool that has scientifically validated benefits. This one emotion has shown to positively impact our entire system- from our attitudes and immune system to our heart and mental clarity. " (from HeartMath)

Focus on New and Powerful Choices to Attract New Situations and People

Below is a valuable teaching from Layne and Paul Cutright:

What you focus on expands in your awareness. If you focus on new and powerful choices, you will magnetize yourself and attract new situations and people. These new situations and people will match your purposefully created beliefs, attitudes, and anticipations.

So here's the new game plan: Start tuning in to the higher-self perspective in every situation and acting as if this perspective is the most valid. Continually ask yourself, "What is the most empowering point of view about this situation?" or "What interpretation will take me to the future I desire?"

Your thoughts become beliefs that become feelings that become attitudes that determine how you'll interpret and respond to situations. Usually the interpretation is automatic and unconscious, but once you've trained yourself to direct and observe your thoughts and identify your belief structures, you can observe and direct your interpretations. Remember, your interpretations aren't beyond your command. As you take charge of your interpretations now, you begin to move to greater levels of authentic personal responsibility and power.

Layne and Paul Cutright