BBC Interview – New Year’s Resolutions & Plans

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As I was wondering around Asda doing my shopping on Friday 30th December a call came out of the blue from the BBC! They wanted me to pop in new year’s eve and talk about new year’s resolutions and plans. So that’s what I did. The twenty minute show is packed with my hints and tips. If you would like to listen all you need to do is visit my new web site and click on the play button underneath “Listen to MP3s” in the right panel.

Here’s the web site: www.my-life-coach.co.uk

I hope you enjoy the MP3 and if you would like a free no obligation life coaching session* then reply to this email with your telephone number and I will give you a call to arrange it.

All the best for 2012. I hope that things progress well for you.

Darren

www.my-life-coach.co.uk (get life coaching)
www.lifecoachcourses.org.uk (become a life coach)

Start or optimise your coaching practice in 2011

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  Firstly, happy new year to you and your family :-)   Included in this post:

  • For new coaches: A great opporunity for you if you want to build your own coaching practice from home with free MP3s
     
  • Free resource: Interview and discussion MP3 on business planning for 2011

 

For New Coaches

What are your plans for 2011? If they include having a successful part time home-based business to run alongside a day job then please read on…

I am enabling more of you who want to help people and create an additional income build a coaching practice. I have an extremely flexible coaching business and enjoy coaching from anywhere to anywhere as most of my clients are Skype and telephone based. If you have a passion to help people and can spare a few hours of your time each week then I can help you do the same!

It all starts with a free consultation with me to check whether this is right for you and to give you as many tips as possible based on over ten years of coaching and business experience. Note that I only plan to offer this service for the first part of the year so act now if you would like to work with me personally on this.

Learn more about the “coaching from home” concept and how you can make having your own practice a reality in 2011 by visiting http://www.my-life-coach.co.uk and sign up for a free consultation.

Also, for a limited time period I am giving away loads of my own MP3 content for free that contains even more tips and advice on how to set up your coaching practice. Sign up via my web site for free and I will email you some MP3s that are relevant and useful to your individual situation.

I look forward to hearing from you if you are the type of person that would benefit from setting up a successful part time coaching practice from home.  

Tip for existing coaches: Business Planning for 2011 – free MP3 and report

“Failures don’t plan to fail; they fail to plan  (Harvey MacKay, US businessman, speaker and author)”

Do you have your coaching business planned out ready for 2011? If not, then I would like to offer you a ten minute MP3 and report that will give you lots of useful information to get started. You can use the tips in here for generating your business plan to start your practice or as part of a regular review if your business is up and running.

I guarantee you that if you set goals, think strategically and plan your business you will stand a much better chance of succeeding. Planning isn’t just something that needs to be done up front, your business plan needs refreshing on a regular basis.

This MP3 is not available publically and is only available to my newsletter subscribers. Therefore, if you would like a copy of this MP3 reply to this email asking for it and I will personally send it over to you. Also, feel free to use this as an opportunity to ask me any questions about optimising your existing practise and I will see what I can do to help.     Darren   www.my-life-coach.co.uk tel: +44 (0) 7806 779029 skype: my-life-coach

Christmas 2010 and 2011

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Hi,

If you celebrate Christmas I hope that you have everything ready and are in a positive state of mind to enjoy the festivities and time with your friends and family.

Christmas can be stressful as it adds another layer of activity onto an already busy schedule for most people. Also, stopping work and relaxing (assuming that you get the chance to relax) over Christmas can feel a little strange sometimes as emotions that may have been surpressed over a busy month or year bubble to the surface requiring your attention.

On the subject of stopping, I attended a meditation class the other evening and given the time of year we enjoyed a reflective meditation looking back over the months of 2010. It was overwhelming for me to think about the amount of personal change that I have gone through and how much I have achieved over the last twelve months. It has been a difficult year, but very fulfilling, enjoyable and revealing. This wasn’t specific to me, everybody that took the time to stop and reflect reported lots of change and progress.

If you create yourself some downtime between eating, drinking, opening presents, visiting folk and looking after children (if you have them) I do recommend that you reflect on how 2010 has been for you and what you would like to achieve in 2011.

I hope you and your family have a wonderful Christmas and wish you all the best for 2011.

Darren

September and meditation

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I love September in the UK. It provides occasional warm sunny days topped and tailed with a noticeable dip in temperature early in the mornings and evenings. We see big changes in the natural world as nights draw in and leaves begin to change colour. September always feels exciting to me. It reminds me of when I used to start the academic year at school and university and has a feeling of newness and change about it.

 

My Flexible Coaching Practice

 

Things have been really busy for me over the last few months. I found it quite a challenge reducing the hours I have been spending on my coaching practice and detaching from it to make room for some other personal challenges I have been working through and stepping up the amount of consultancy I am doing within organisations. I am out of the permanent day job now and running my business full time, which feels liberating. It provides a nice example of how flexible coaching practices are. You can literally step up or scale down the amout of work you do to align around things that are more important or to address income requirements giving you complete flexibility.

 

I continue to provide lots of support to people that want to combine a coaching practice with a day job or other income stream. If you’ve been thinking about helping people through coaching and creating a credible disposable income alongside your day job then please get in touch. I will be happy to share some tips with you and explain how I have made it a success. It’s a much better way of coaching rather than trying to jump into it full time and lose your current income stream. It can be surprising how much you can help people and how much money you can make through coaching in a relatively small number of hours.

 

Visit http://www.my-life-coach.co.uk/html/support_for_coaches.html for more information on how you can get started including the opportunity of a free consultation.

 

Meditation

 

I have been spending more and more of my time meditating over the last few months. Meditation is a great way of relaxing and becoming more grounded. There are thousands of different meditation techniques available. The two major techniques that I use are “mindfulness of breathing” and “metta bhavana”. The first helps quieten and focus your mind (great if you have a busy mind or find it difficult to concentrate) and the second helps generate compassion towards yourself and others. Many of my clients introduce a meditation practice into their daily routine and see great results. It is also great way of raising your awareness as to how you are feeling and to give you insight into what things may need to change about yourself or your environment to create more happiness.

 

I get asked for instructions on meditation quite a bit. I recommend a web site called “free buddhist audio” http://www.freebuddhistaudio.com . If you look out for the two techniques I mentioned earlier under the guided meditation section you should find more details and mp3s to help you. Some people find that it helps to meditate within a group. A google search is a good way of locating a local meditation group if that would suit you. Many of these groups will teach you how to meditate. It takes time to learn and can be a little challenging, but it is well worth persevering with.

 

Remember that you can receive help via a free consultation available via my web site http://www.my-life-coach.co.uk across a range of personal and business areas.

 

I hope that you are enjoying your September and I look forward to writing to you again soon.

 

 

Darren

Tips on Salary Negotiation – Second Part of E-Course

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The next subject I would like to move on to is salary negotiation. This is an essential part of the job application and selection process. Firstly, I wanted to share seven very important tips with you:

Tip 1 – Be conscious of when you discuss salary during the selection process including interviews. Timing is very important. You may want to wait until you are confident that you are being offered the position and the organisation really wants you before starting to negotiate salary. Alternatively, you may want to raise it early within the interview for some other reason. Your circumstances may vary, but whenever you raise it make a conscious decision as to whether it is the right time. Also, be mentally prepared for the interviewer to raise it at any point and how you might respond.

Tip 2 – Be clear on your boundaries. What is the least that you are prepared to take and what is your upper target? This sounds obvious, but many people go into interviews without this information and lose confidence if they are asked to discuss salary. Know your boundaries and you can be clear and confident when you enter into the discussion.

Tip 3 – Decide how you are going to ‘position’ the priority of your salary requirements. For example, you may be desperate for a certain salary, but in an interview context you may not want to expose this and may adjust the priority of the discussion accordingly. This also links into Tip 1 on timing.

Tip 4 – Consider the whole package when calculating salary boundaries. Perks like cars, health care, flexible working etc. can be a big part of your total ‘package’ when applying for a job. Therefore, they need to be considered. Also, consider how you may want to make up for any perks in your current job if they do not apply in your new job. For example, you may have pension contributions in your current job, but not in a job you are applying for. Therefore, you may need more base salary to compensate for this.

Tip 5 – Seize the opportunity to negotiate! For most people, the point of negotiation within an interview maybe the only chance they get to seriously impact their income for a few months or years. Many organisations will not give big pay rises once you are on board even if you get promoted. Therefore, it may be worth thinking about whether you should try to maximise your earning potential during the initial salary negotiation.

Tip 6 – Balance risk with reward. Asking for a huge salary may be great if you get it, but what if you don’t? What if the interviewer thinks that you have a ludicrously false understanding of your own worth and declines you as a result? This is all about balance and the trick is to do your research and position yourself appropriately.

Tip 7 – Try to establish the employer’s bottom line. This is standard practise in any negotiation. Ideally, you want to work out how much the employer is prepared to stretch to within the role you are applying for so you can then position yourself appropriately. Also, you have the opportunity of using tactics like requesting more than the employer’s highest salary and negotiate down from there, which may mean that you still end up in a good place.

Remember, that there is no magic formula to apply with salary negotiation. The main thing is to do your research, establish your boundaries and principles, balance risk with reward and above all else to be confident. It is much easier to be confident when you have a clear position.

ACTION – Your action is to think through your response to each tip in relation to the job that you wish to apply for. Write down your position clearly on a blank sheet of paper and establish your position. I recommend that you spend at least thirty minutes on this. This could take some time if you need to do research or clarify your own views.

In the meantime, if you are not an existing My Life Coach client and wish to book a complementary session to explore this with me you can do so at: http://www.my-life-coach.co.uk/html/life_coaching_my_life_coach_no.html .

Also, if you would like to chat through any concerns or challenges via email feel free to drop me a note.

Prepare for My Interview – Free e-course

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Hello!

 

I provide a range of e-courses through my goal setting software Life Aligner Pro (www.greatgoalsetting.com) . This is a great piece of software available for £19.99 or $34.99.

I have decided to provide one of the e-courses for free through my blog. This e-course covers off the subject of preparing for an interview. I hope you find this useful and remember that you can visit www.my-life-coach.co.uk if you would like a free coaching session from me to help you with careers advice including starting a business.

Here’s the e-course…..

I know that most people are pushed for time and do not want to spend hours reading hundreds of pages of text in one go. It is for that reason these eCourses are delivered in bite sized chunks.

Job interviews are two-way. Your potential employer gets to learn about you and you get to learn about your employer. We are going to start with looking at what you want to learn about your employer.

It is important to have a list of questions that you need answering. There is the obvious stuff like salary and working hours etc, but there is a lot more you may want to know. Here is a list of some of the areas that you may wish to explore in the interview:

- Salary

- Location

- Ethical code

- Travel required

- Hours

- Flexibility

- Your future boss

- Your peers

- Career progression

- What’s expected of you

- What happened to the last person in the role you are applying for

- Financial stability of the organisation

- The organisation’s values

- Working environment

- Skills required

- How subsequent interviews will be conducted

- Start date

- Probationary conditions

- Temporary or permanent

- Next steps after the interview

- Other jobs available in the organisation to which you may be suited

Now this is just a very quick brain dump and there will be many more things that you wish to find out. Are there some additions to this list that are important to you?

You need to be careful not to ask too many questions in the interview. Why is this? Because you could come across as being high maintenance or unwilling to accept uncertainty. Also, the person interviewing you may be pushed for time. Therefore, it is worth getting your questions down in priority order. You may find that a lot of your questions get answered without you even asking them as the interview proceeds and the interviewer explains a little more about the role.

You may want to think about what the interviewer may ask them self in response to the questions you ask them. For example, if you asked “can you tell me how flexible you are about the hours I can work” what would the interviewer think? Now this can depend on the job and interview and you need to use your own judgement. Be careful what you ask for and remember that by asking a question you could be communicating a message that may be inappropriate. The flip side of this is that the right question at the right time to the right interviewer will make a great impression.

It is also possible for you to find out enough information ahead of the interview. For example, you could speak with the representative from the organisation who is arranging the interview. You could ask for a job description or profile ahead of time or check out the organisation’s web site if they have one for more information.

If you know anybody that works within the organisation it is often a good idea to see if you can find out more about your specific role, department and boss by asking a few questions.

OK – so here are your two actions, which I would like you to have completed within the next three days.

1. Identify the questions you wish to get answered. Write them down and list them in priority order. You can use the list above and try to add some questions that are important to you, but haven’t been covered here.

2. Write down a list of questions that you want to find out answers to before the interview.

I recommend that you spend between thirty minutes and one hour on these actions. It is important to give this points some real thought and focus. Your next part of the e-course will appear on my blog in a couple of weeks.

In the meantime, if you are not an existing My Life Coach client and wish to book a complementary session to explore this with me you can do so at: http://www.my-life-coach.co.uk/html/life_coaching_my_life_coach_no.html .

Also, if you would like to chat through any concerns or challenges via email feel free to drop me a note.

 

Darren Cockburn

My Life Coach

 

P.S. If there is somebody that you know who could benefit from my services, I would appreciate it if you could forward my details to them. The high level of referrals I receive helps me keep my coaching rates affordable. Thank you.

 

darren@my-life-coach.co.uk

www.my-life-coach.co.uk

Skype: my-life-coach

tel: +44 (0)7806 779029

 

Are you going at the right pace?

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During coaching with my clients I often observe some fundamental truths about the way things work in their particular context, which can be applied more generically to other areas of life. This week was no exception.

I was having a discussion with a client who was working on a number of different things in parallel. He is very goal orientated and always keen to set plenty of stretched targets. Anyway, this week he told me that he had been feeling a little stressed since the previous session, but was wondering why given the fact that he had completed all of his actions. After a brief discussion we concluded that there were a couple of things that he was moving forward too fast.

Everything has its own natural pace and rhythm. Sometimes we can and need to speed things up or slow them down, but the majority of the time you get better results and an easier life by letting things go at their own natural pace. Let me give you some examples:

  • Developing a personal relationship – go too fast for the other person and it creates problems, go too slow for the other person and it also creates problems. Match the pace that the other person wants to go at and life gets easier.
  • Building a business – trying to build a business at a super fast rate can result in unreasonable risk taking, working too many hours , compromising other areas of your life etc. Build it too slow and you may experience frustration, lack of income that you need or the product or service you are offering could become out of date!
  • Verbal communication – speaking too quickly for somebody who talks much slower will confuse them –they won’t be able to keep up! Speak too slowly for somebody that speaks much quicker will result in frustration for them. Pace their speed and you will enjoy a much greater sense of rapport.

I could provide hundreds more cases where this applies. Now sometimes there will be exceptions. For example, you may be assigned to look after a project at work that is just going too slow and needs speeding up. Sometimes you do have to shove a rocket under things. Another extreme is where your kids are trying to do their homework too fast and making mistakes as a result. In that case it makes sense for them to slow down and be more mindful.

Even in examples where you speed things up or slow them down it still helps if you initially match the pace that things are going at initially. If you were running in a marathon and you wanted to speed up somebody else it wouldn’t make sense to go charging past them at twice the speed. You would run alongside them for a while, pace them and then gradually encourage them to speed up.

I encourage you to think about the different things you may be working on and ask yourself whether you are respecting their natural pace. Also ask yourself whether you are respecting the pace of others within your key relationships.

If you would like any help with adjusting the pace of something you are working on then please contact me. You are welcome to a free no obligation consultation if you are interested in getting some coaching to work on an important challenge. The list of areas are available at my web site http://www.my-life-coach.co.uk .

 

The greatest gift you can give another is the purity of your attention

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I’ve been spending this weekend with friends in the Peak District. I live in Nottingham, which is a busy city and I am always impressed at what a one hour drive can do in terms of a change in scenery. I love Nottingham, but it is great to get out into the open air and countryside from time to time. Clears the mind J

I am sat in my friend’s office helping myself to his wireless internet connection for a few minutes whilst he’s busy doing something else. It felt like a good time to update my blog and send out a newsletter. I cleared my mind briefly and then asked myself what I wanted to write about. I was reflecting on something that has been manifesting itself as a theme for me this week. It’s been coming up time and time again.

One of the things that I really like about this particular friend is how well he can focus his attention. In particular, how he really focuses his attention on what people say and how they are feeling. To quote Richard Moss, “The greatest gift you can give another is the purity of your attention.” I heard this quoted in some audio that I was listening to a few days ago and it also came up in a group discussion I was involved in earlier in the week.

To be able to give people the purity of your attention requires you to be very generous. Not in terms of material things, but in terms of your focus. Can you remember a time when somebody really focussed on you, listened to you and could sense how you were feeling? People really appreciate that. Now in contrast, compare that to a time when you were short changed i.e. you really wanted somebody’s attention, but they were focusing elsewhere or wanted to move onto the next thing they were saying or doing.

In a coaching context I consider myself to be in a good place when it comes to focusing my attention on clients. It comes naturally to me. However, when I reflect of other areas of my life I think there is a lot of room for improvement. I am naturally very task and results driven, which sometimes means that I default to rushing conversations or not really focusing on other people because I’m too busy thinking about what I need to be doing next. Even if you look at this purely in terms of getting things done it will usually make sense to give people your full attention.  It helps build your relationship with that person and gives you a much better chance of understanding what is going on inside their head. This enables you to learn more, make better decisions, which ultimately helps you get stuff done.

It doesn’t need to take long. Arguably, you will get much more out of a two minute focused interaction with somebody rather than a ten minute interaction where your mind is elsewhere. This doesn’t mean that you need to give everybody your full attention at all times. You only have so much of this focused attention to go round so you need to be careful about when and where you apply it. If you start by applying more focused attention within your most important relationships e.g. with your partner, good friends, children etc. you will see big differences. This also applies within work/business relationships.

So how do you give somebody your focused attention? There are lots of ways of doing this, but here are some ideas to help you:

·         Ask yourself “do you really understand what they are saying?” You could reflect back what they are trying to communicate in words or an expression to confirm or demonstrate your understanding. If you are unsure, you could explore with questions.

·         Keep your mind clear and avoid thinking about what you are going to be saying next. Just focus on the other person.

·         Try and understand both the fact of what is being said and the feelings behind what is being described and empathise. Feel what is being said yourself.

·         Wait for the person to finish speaking before you speak. Only think about what they have said after they have finished speaking. A good technique here, which I have learnt is to count to three after the other person has finished speaking before speaking yourself.

·         Once they have finished speaking ask yourself “why is this person telling me this?” What is behind their communication? For example, if somebody is sharing an experience with you it will help if you try and share that experience with them. Are they informing you or trying to help you with something?

If you are a natural at this stuff like my friend then that’s great. However, if this is something that you think you can work on then I invite you to select a couple of key relationships for now and start to apply focused attention. Give this a couple of weeks and you will see the results manifest themselves. If you find that this starts to make a difference for you please drop me a note and let me know how you get on.

Free coaching session

I'm feeling very relaxed

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 Well I must say that I am feeling very relaxed. I came back from a ten day holiday in the sun last week. Seven days with my family and then four days taking some time out on my own. I find holidays so reflective and always feel that I come back wiser than I went. How does that work if you are really relaxed and not thinking a great deal? Well think about it. No don’t – you don’t need to…that’s my point.

Sometimes the most insightful observations and ideas pop into your head when you are not actively thinking about stuff. Try it…if you are at a point in the day where you don’t need to think then don’t think. Switch off the thinking. It also has the added benefit of being very calming. It’s great. Very simple, very effective, but also harder than you think when you decide to stop thinking J

I must admit to taking half a day doing some work on my business whilst I was away. I often do this. I like to work when my mind is calm and settled. Good stuff comes out. I’m still beavering away on my secret project, which you will learn more about over the next few months.

Also, there are some blog entries and new web pages on my site that I wanted to alert you to.

  • Beware: “Spur of the moment” Career Moves & Business Decisions – this is all about the risks of making quick decisions on your career or business without really thinking them through. Very risky (especially in these times). Worth a read if your mind has a tendency to go there.
  • How I got into Life Coaching and Business Coaching – I am repeating myself time and time again in emails responding to people asking “Darren, how did you get into Life Coaching and Business Coaching?” – so I thought I would write a blog entry on the subject.
  • Life Coaching Part Time – Would you like to transform people’s lives or businesses whilst earning a significant additional income through life coaching on a part time basis? Take a look at this web page.

I hope that 2010 is going well for you. If you are struggling to get traction on any of your goals or you are still to get things set out for 2010 remember that it’s not too late. You can book a complementary coaching session with me (new clients only) or download the latest version of Life Aligner Pro 2010 Goal Setting Software from www.greatgoalsetting.com, which is currently on special offer for only £19.99 / $34.99.

Take care and please drop me an email if there is anything you need help with. I do have some free slots coming up again over the next few weeks if you are interested.
 

 

Darren

 

 

 
 
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