“So much to do; so little time!”

We are busy people. There is always something we need to attend to, some appointment we need to show up for. Kevin DeYoung wrote a book whose title says it all: “Crazy Busy”.

The problem with busy-ness is this: we get so caught up in the rat race that we forget about such things as purpose, meaning, and value. We are unable to be truly present in the here and now because we are thinking about the next thing(s) on our schedule.

I would like to suggest that coaching is a way out of crazy busy-ness. Coaching creates a space to sort out what is important. It is also a space where we can discover things that we are merely tolerating, and make plans to get those tolerations out of our lives.

I am not crazy-busy, and I am sure that the reason why is that I get regular coaching on what is most important to me. I create action around those important things and feel at ease about what gets left by the wayside.

If you are feeling overwhelmed and crazy-busy, may I suggest you add to your crazy-busy schedule a coaching call? Let’s work on your crazy-busy schedule and start cleaning it up. Coaching can give you clarity on what really matters right now in your life.

If you haven’t scheduled a call in awhile, jump over to my scheduling page and set up a time. If you can find a time there, my commitment is to be wholly present to you when you call.

(Image by silviarita from Pixabay)

I’m developing several packages to facilitate coaching for Spiritual Growth. Here is my first offering:

“The Fruit of the Spirit” Coaching Package

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” (Gal 5:22-23)

This three-month coaching season would have the following goals for you:

·       To think about your strengths and challenges in these virtues

·       To become a more fruitful Christian through intentional practice

·       To develop new habits for increasing in these virtues

·       To design coaching sessions for…

o   Either drilling down deep into one or two virtues

o   Or spending a week or two thinking about each of the nine virtues

·       To do a final evaluation for celebrating growth

To get started, just go to my scheduling page and sign up for a 30 or 60 minute Zoom coaching session. In our first session, just let me know that you would like to go through the Fruit of the Spirit Coaching Package. We’ll do a simple evaluation and plan our path forward from there.

(Image by Daniel Roberts from Pixabay)

Well, today I’ll jump on the “Response to COVID” bandwagon and add my own.

Coaching goes on unabated!

So what’s coachable in our current situation? Here are a few prompts:

• What does this time make possible for me?

• How will I handle my income loss?

• How do I respond to people who don’t share my views about this?

• What really important thing have I been putting off “until I have more time”?

• What will my transition back to normalcy look like?

Of course, this is also a good time for self-reflection, vision casting, or coaching for spiritual growth.

The bottom line: My business has not shut down, and a Zoom meeting or phone call is 100% COVID-safe, so schedule a call soon, and let’s keep our time constructive!

Hi everyone. I just wanted to let you know that I have now officially completed my certification as “Executive Christian Coach” (ECC) with Coach Approach Ministries.

What does this mean?

Well, before I can receive my professional credentials with the International Coach Federation (ICF), I need to get a certain amount of accredited training. I received my training through Coach Approach Ministries (CAM), beginning January 4, 2018.

The ECC path is intended to prepare a coach for receiving the Professional ICF certificate. But I need 500 hours of experience, which is still a while into the future for me. However the training was more than enough to qualify for the Associate Coach credential, as I described in my November blog.

I also received a congratulatory email from the CAM President, Chad Hall, in which he stated that I was their very first student to complete the ECC certification! This was an unexpected honor, and I want to thank the teachers at CAM for their training.

So there it is. Like I mentioned above, I still need about 350 hours of experience coaching, so feel free to schedule a time! I’m looking forward to being your thinking partner on the way to your goals.

Last year, my wife Tracie gave me this beautiful hourglass for my birthday to commemorate my new coaching career. If you’ve been to my store, you might recognize it as a symbol for my half-hour coaching conversation.

What does it mean?

A coaching conversation begins with you, the client, bringing a topic. A topic can be anything that’s been on your mind a lot lately. Often, but not always, it’s a problem or challenge for which you are trying to find a solution.

The top part of the hourglass represents the first part of the coaching conversation. During that time, we explore the topic, figure out why it is important, look at it from lots of different angles, and basically answer some broad questions about it.

Over the course of this exploration, we work our way down to the pinch point of the hourglass, that narrow neck that all the sand passes through. This is where we find something actionable about the topic. Here we decide what we want to walk away with at the end of the conversation.

The bottom of the hourglass explores actions and designs accountability around those actions. What are your options? Which option are you most excited about? How will you be sure to follow through with that?

My hourglass is actually a half-hour glass, because I believe that a lot of progress can be made in just 30 minutes of coaching.

It’s called the “hourglass model”, and this is not the only way a coaching conversation can develop. I use other models for other situations. But I wanted to give you a look at what’s going on “behind the scenes” in many of our coaching conversations.

Looking forward to coaching with you soon!

I’m hit and miss with New Year’s Resolutions. On one hand, the new year is a good time to start a new habit with what looks like a clean slate. It’s a clear stake in the ground, a point of reference that is easily definable.

On the other hand, New Year’s Resolutions are notorious for their failure rate. Around this time of year, you’ve heard the statistical failure rate. It’s high.

For me, the answer is in the middle. It’s important to set some goals to achieve; it’s important to have a clear and focused vision for the year; It’s important to get started.

If you’ve made a resolution, how about hiring a coach to keep you on track? How about using your coach to figure out what small daily actions will lead to the result you want? How about designing accountability for following through on your stated goal?

If you don’t make resolutions, what is your plan instead? Are you moving toward your goals with 20/20 focus, or is your life adrift? If you are adrift, how will you get headed in the right direction?

I’m here to help you make 2020 your best year yet. Give me a call, and let’s think through your purposes and goals in 2020!

It’s that season of the year again, a time of beauty and celebration!

It can also be a time of challenges and opportunities, which means…

Christmas is Coachable!

• How can I make the most of my Christmas season this year?

• What would be a great gift for my (spouse, child, friend)?

• How can I avoid gaining weight over the holidays?

• Bah-Humbug! I don’t like Christmas. What’s behind this?

• Too much to do! How can I learn to have a little peace in the busy-ness?

…and much more!

If any of these topics resonate with you, head on over and set up a call at my scheduling page.

And, Merry Christmas to you all!

Today I received my official credential from the International Coach Federation as an Associate Certified Coach (ACC)!

I want to thank the many clients who helped me accumulate the 100 hours of coaching experience required. That’s 100 hours of thinking together in intentional conversations, leading to forward movement and achieving goals.

The credential also required 60 hours of accredited training, which I received through Coach Approach Ministries (CAM), starting in January of 2018. Thanks to my friends and fellow coaches at CAM as well.

What this means…

Hopefully, you won’t notice much change in my style, but I am always looking for ways to improve.

The next level is Professional Certified Coach, which requires 500 hours of coaching and harder grading on the “oral exam” (a recorded conversation). So start thinking up some topics!

Oh, and my rates will be going up soon, so if you haven’t looked at my online store, go check it out and get some coaching for your next big thing.

If you’ve coached with me at all, you know that my first question is usually, “What would you like to work on today?”

Most of the time, there is something going on in your life that can benefit greatly from a coaching conversation.

But what happens when I ask that question and you draw a blank? Is that just the end of the call?

I certainly hope not! For almost 10 years, I have been coached at least twice a month, and more recently, I meet with a coach every week as the “PBC” (Person Being Coached). Since I’m used to this, I rarely tell my coach that I’m drawing a blank (although this has happened).

Sometimes, I’ve got a few vague ideas, and I start tossing them around with my coach. Before long, he will have me running down a path of discovery or awareness that I wasn’t even expecting! How cool is that?

Sometimes, the coach asks about significant things that have been going on during the past week. He might ask, “What is a win from last week?” I think a bit and tell a short “winning” story from my life. The coach takes that and asks about my learning from the win. What might I do to win again in the future?

Of course, the opposite gets to coaching much more quickly: “What’s been a struggle for you lately?” Coaching is a great way to figure out exactly what the struggle is and how I can best overcome it.

Some of my best coaching conversations came as complete surprises when I threw out a topic haphazardly, and the coach showed curiosity and asked some powerful questions about the topic.

So don’t be afraid to come to the call and say, “I don’t know what to coach on.” There’s a little word I love to add to such statements, and that is “yet”. Let’s dig around for a couple minutes and see what turns up.

Another way to get ideas is to complete my coaching prep form. I use it myself. This form will help you reflect a little on your week and on what might be a good topic for coaching. Check it out!

So to answer the question: “YES!” Let’s meet anyway, even if you don’t (think) that you have a topic!

I’ve reworked how you can pay for my coaching services, and this video (if you don’t want to watch the video, the following is just a transcription) will walk you through the process and your options, but first a note about paying…

The most important thing to understand about paying a coach is that you are not paying for the conversations. What you are paying for are the RESULTS of being coached around an area you want to take action in.

For example, you may hire me because you are tolerating a toxic working environment. You want to improve your relationships with your coworkers. Our coaching conversation will probably start with what “improve” means. Where do you want to end up? Where are you now?  Through our coaching conversations and thinking we will come up with strategies and actions to make our vision a reality.

As you implement those strategies, we expect that the result will be a less toxic environment and a more satisfying situation for you.

So what did you really pay for? Three hours on the phone with me or a less stressful environment at work? If you think in terms of the results, the cost of the coaching makes a lot more sense. Also, the more you pay, the more obligation you will feel to “get your money’s worth” and follow through on what might be some pretty difficult actions.

I’m pretty ambivalent about pay. It’s not “coach or don’t eat” in my case. I coach mainly because I enjoy engaging people in intentional conversations about important things. I love to help people reach their goals! I’m also working to get my Professional Certified Coach credential with the Coach Federation. That requires 450 paid hours of experience.

That’s a lot. Fortunately, they don’t say what hourly rate we must charge, so we can count it even if it’s only a dollar a call. They also accept bartering, and I have coached in exchange for things other than money.

Which brings me to my Barefoot Cory Coaching Store!

If you come to my website at BarefootCory.com, you will see some menu options along the upper right margin. Click on “Scheduling” to go to my scheduling page.

On the scheduling page, there is a new button that says “Click Here to Purchase Your Coaching Product.” When you click on it, it opens my store in a new tab. At the store you have four products you can purchase: The first two are the 30-minute and 60-minute coaching calls, which I have already been offering. Then there are two package options, which allow you to purchase multiple coaching calls for a single fee.

So let me run through these with you. First the 30-minute coaching session. When you click here, it brings up the page for purchasing a single session.

Now, I’m doing an experiment on how much to charge. I want to co-create the payment agreement with you, my clients. I want YOU to decide how much you are able and willing to pay for coaching sessions leading to great results. I understand that some people just don’t have the resources to pay the full price for coaching, so they need a discount. So I’ve created four tiers of payment for each product. My tiers are named after different runs. Have I mentioned I’m a barefoot runner? The most I’ve done is a 5K, but maybe someday, I’ll try a harder challenge.

Anyway, for the 30-minute call, you can choose the Training rate, at $2, the 5K Run version at $5, Half-Marathon at $10, or the Marathon rate of $20. You also have an option to purchase more than one coaching session by changing the “quantity” button. When you add your coaching session to your cart, and then Check Out, things proceed much like any other online purchase. You’ll enter your contact information and payment information, you will get a confirmation email, and I will get an email telling me what you have purchased.

Going back to the store, there is also the options to purchase a 60-minute session, which is just like the 30-minute, only the prices are doubled.

I also offer two new options: The subscription and the package.

First, the subscription. When you choose this item, you have the opportunity to pay for 3 months of coaching as a subscriber. You can schedule up to four sessions per month, and you can choose either 30 minute or 60 minute sessions. Use the quantity button if you want to pay for 6 months or even a year’s subscription.

Second, I also offer an 8-session package. This option allows you to spread out the coaching over as long a period as you like. Often this works when you have a particular project you want to complete, and all of the coaching is around that one project. Again, you can choose 30 or 60 minute sessions.

So now you’ve come to my store and purchased a coaching product, but you’re not done!

After you complete the purchase, go back to the scheduling page and schedule your first session.

If you haven’t used my scheduler yet, it’s really convenient. It gives you direct access to my calendar and what time slots I have open, so we don’t have to go back and forth trying to figure out a time that works for both of us.

First, click either the 30-minute or 60-minute session. It will take you to this page. Here, you need to specify your time zone. That’s really convenient for those of you in other time zones, because believe me, without it, confusion would reign! (Your time or my time? Don’t forget Daylight Savings time ends on Nov 3rd…And so on…)

After you choose your time zone, click the “Set Time Zone” button to bring up the calendar. My feedback is that some people miss this point, especially if the time zone is already correct in this box.

On the calendar, look for a time that works for you. If the day is greyed out, that means that I have other commitments and no available slots. As you can see, you can even choose a few weekend slots if you like.

After choosing the time, you have an option to make it recurring. That works well if you want to schedule a weekly session at the same time. Don’t worry, it will tell you if one of the times is unavailable.

After you choose your time, you come to this page and give me your contact information. This will set things up so you get an email reminder 24 hours before our call. Good stuff! We all need reminders.

So that’s it! You are good to go, and I’m looking forward to helping you reach your goals, make progress, or just get unstuck!

Talk to you soon!

So I’m trying this, and I’m into my second “12 Week Year”.

Here’s the idea: I used to approach goals with “annual thinking”. I set New Year’s Resolutions in January, then notice in December that I’m falling short (if I remember them at all!). The middle part of the year consisted largely of “coasting” with respect to my goals.

What if I compress that time frame? Instead of having a 12-month year, I have a 12-week “year”. Each week is now like a month, each day is now like a week.

I set three or four (not too many!) attainable goals for 12 weeks from today. Every Monday, I assess how I am doing on reaching those goals. Each day, I establish three big goals to complete for that day that contribute to those main goals for the 12 Week Year.

The promise is “Get more done in 12 weeks than others do in 12 months.”

So how did my first “year” go? Well, I reached two of my goals, I almost reached one, and totally failed on one. I consider my first “year” a success, though.

If you do the calendar math, there’s a 13th week. That’s the time to evaluate and set new goals. So I tackled that last goal and came up with new tactics to achieve it.

Now I’m in the second week of my second 12 Week Year, and I’m doing very well on that goal. My new tactics are working!

What’s coachable here? Lots of things! Which goals are most important to me? What are the best tactics to reach a given goal? How can I make this goal a challenge, yet also achievable?

So if you’re a “productivity junkie” like me, check out the book or the website. I’ve found it very helpful.

I could coach myself.

In fact, I have tried this.

Open a Word document, type “Coach: What do you want to work on today?”; type “Me: I’m thinking about…”

And off I go, using myself as a thinking partner. Sometimes I get to pretty good results…

But, nothing is better for me than to have another coach guiding my thinking. Just having another person there changes the whole process. The coach is listening carefully for what I am saying and not saying. The coach will ask the hard questions that I might not ask myself.

In a recent call, my coach said point-blank, “You don’t sound very excited about this.”

Zing! That’s right, I didn’t even notice that! I wonder why I don’t sound excited?

A core coaching skill is called presence. And presence does not come naturally in our highly distracted world. It takes a lot of practice to be present with someone. Like, ALL there.

As your coach, I want you to know first of all that I am here. My mind is not on something else. I’m not thinking about lunch, or texts, or email, or my schedule, or my similar-story-to-yours-that-I-solved-brilliantly…

My mind, my focus, my mental energy is on nothing but you and your topic for the length of the call.

So keep that in mind next time we coach together. Your session is all about you and your topic. I am here for you, to spur you on to the deepest thinking possible on your topic.

Looking forward to being here for you!

“If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time.” (Zig Ziglar)

What are you aiming at in your life? What is your vision? How do you want people to remember you at your funeral?

These are big and important questions. They are also questions that fall in the “important/not urgent” quadrant of Eisenhower’s well-known scheme. You will get through the day without a life plan. You’ll probably get along OK for years or even decades.

At age 53, I finally said that I needed to spell these things out. After all, I’m a Life Coach, right? This is the stuff I thrive on.

But where to begin? Well, for me, I decided to stop searching around for the “perfect” system (there are many to choose from). I just chose one that I worked through from beginning to end. Altogether, it took about 8 hours, both to read the book, then implement the process. Not a huge time investment, when you consider the payoff.

The book I used as a guide is called Living Forward, by Michael Hyatt and Daniel Harkavy. The end result is a 10-12 page document that really gives great, personalized direction for your life.

One key for me, though was that I needed to invest about 4 hours in a block to write the first draft. I had a sort of retreat at home where I turned off all distractions and just did this one important task.

Best of all - It’s coachable in two ways: First, you can be coached on the specific elements of the Plan. Second, after you write your Plan, you find all kinds of details that you can be coached on. Lately, when I am preparing to be coached, I open up my Life Plan document and look for commitments that I am having trouble following through on. Those are great coaching topics, because I have already decided that they are priorities in my life.

So that’s my encouragement for today - Stop drifting and nail down a plan. You will not regret it!

To get the most out of your coaching sessions, it is sometimes helpful to reflect on where you are generally, or perhaps what progress you have made (or have had difficulty making) with previously defined actions.

I’ve made a tool that will help you to organize your thoughts and make the most of your coaching session. It’s called the Call Preparation Form, and it’s found under the “Coaching Forms” link at the top of my web page. (Go ahead and click that link; it’ll open in another window.)

Basically, this form just asks a few questions about how things are going and what might be helpful to focus on for our coaching conversation.

Your work in this form is confidential, and that I am the only person with access to the form. Fill out whatever seems relevant; it will not be graded. You can fill out the form online, or download the form and simply use it for your own reflection. You will get a copy of your responses in your email.

I use the form to get ready for being coached, and it really helps me zero in on what’s important, so give it a try!

By the way, if you would like to receive my blog in your email, I’d love to have you on my email list. Just contact me and let me know!

Here’s a big problem for us Life Coaches…

Whenever the “uninitiated” hear the word “coach”, they think of Scott Frost or Tom Osborne. Well, at least that’s who us Nebraskans think of!

The coach knows the game, and his job is to whip his team into shape so they can win. The coach is the expert in the game. He has the answers to the team’s problems.

I am NOT that sort of coach. I will NOT make you do push-ups!

Instead think of this:

This is also a coach. It is a vehicle that takes you from where you are to where you want to be. I’m not the driver, you are. I’m just the vehicle that makes it easier for you to reach your goals.

So if you want to get somewhere in life, hire a life coach. Our purpose is to make your journey a success!

(Photos courtesy of Wikipedia)

The first thing you see when you go to BarefootCory.com is “Do You Have a Beautiful Goal to Reach?” So, what do I mean by a “Beautiful Goal”?

Beautiful is a powerful word. We think of beautiful scenery, beautiful art, beautiful music, or beautiful people. These things attract us and we value them.

In the same way, a beautiful goal is attractive to us. It calls out to us from the future and draws us to it. Rather than avoiding it, we do everything we can to move toward it.

A beautiful goal is something we value. We will spend time and money to reach that goal. It is something that we know is important in our lives.

Finally, a beautiful goal is unique to us. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” You can’t go buy a book called “100 Beautiful Goals to Achieve”. No, your beautiful goal is yours alone. Sometimes you don’t know what it is until you give it some thought.

Once you find a beautiful goal, your next question is how to get there. That’s where a life coach comes in to help you think it through and create a plan to reach that goal.

So what’s your beautiful goal? That’s coachable! I would love to help you figure out what it is, then get to work on how to get there.

If you’re new to coaching or not even sure what it is, go ahead and schedule a free 30-minute inquiry call by clicking on the Scheduling link above. That scheduler give you direct access to my calendar, so you can pick out a time that’s convenient for you. I’d love to tell you more about all the benefits life coaching.

If you’re already coaching with me, consider this as your next topic: “I want to discover and achieve my beautiful goal.”

I don’t know if I’ve every seen a handyman advertise himself this way, but in coaching, there really is “no job too big”.

What is the meaning of my life? What is my purpose? What are my core values? How can I transition to a different career?

These are huge questions. Getting a handle on them can have a huge impact on the way you live your daily life.

Too often, we seem content to leave such questions unanswered, just hoping that everything will work out in the end. But we all know deep down that intentional living is better.

These are questions I love to coach, and my clients teach me so much as I listen to them delve into these topics.

I have a coach who is guiding me through these questions for myself. Right now we’re thinking about my values. So much to consider! So much insight into the unique life that God has given me to live. I’m aiming to craft a “vision statement”, but I’ve got a ways to go on that one. But I’m hard at work on it. Maybe I’ll share it here when I’m done.

What about you? Do you have a big coaching job? What big questions would you like to pursue?

Just click on the scheduling link above and sign up for a time. Remember, the first inquiry call is always free.

Sometimes, a handyman will advertise “No Job Too Small”, just to make sure that people will think of him when they need a light switch rewired or a door lock installed.

The really great thing about coaching is that it can be applied in so many ways. Just like the handyman, I like to think that there is “No Job Too Small” for coaching!

Trying to figure out what to have for dinner tonight? I might ask, “What does your ideal dinner look like?”

Trying to figure out how you will get the lawn mowed this summer? I might ask, “What is important to you about having a nice lawn?”

Wish you knew how to remember names better? I might ask, “What makes knowing someone’s name significant?”

What’s really cool about this is that even something that seems trivial or insignificant can lead you into new thinking and new awareness about yourself. What you thought was a small thing actually may lead you into new habits and a greater satisfaction with your daily life.

So try it out next time you coach with me! You may well be pleasantly surprised at the results.

There are certain phrases I look forward to hearing during a coaching conversation.

“That’s a good question!”

“Never thought of it that way before…”

“I don’t know.”

That last one may come as a surprise, because it sounds like a dead end. But one tiny modification makes all the difference…”I don’t know…yet.”

You see, “I don’t know” represents a boundary, a frontier. It’s the edge of your current thinking, beyond which is a whole world of new thinking and new awareness.

So if you hear me cheer the next time you say, “I don’t know,” don’t take it personally. I’m just getting excited about the new thinking that is about to happen.

In the course of my coach training, I’ve had lots of opportunities to be coached! This is one of the best parts of it! But if I’m the client, as the call approaches, I start thinking, “What should I be coached on today?”

The answer is easy and hard.

Easy: Just about anything can be the start of a coaching conversation. “What should I have for dinner tonight?” I might ask…The coach will reply, “What factors usually help you decide that?” Before long, I’ve got new insight in the way I think about food, eating, taste, schedule, family time, etc. I go away from the call thinking, “Wow. All that from one trivial question!”

Hard: What do I really need to be coached on right now? Often, it’s a topic I’ve been avoiding: an unreconciled relationship, a crucial conversation with a friend, an overwhelming project I’ve been avoiding, and so on. I also know that I’ll have some action to take at the end of the call. More busy-ness! On the other hand, the payoff for this kind of action can be huge.

So what will it be for your next call? Easy or Hard? Don’t overthink it! Just schedule it and go!