Redefine Possible

Fears are educated into us, and can, if we wish, be educated out. 
Karl Augustus Menninger

Redefine Possible - Overcome Fear

The world has played witness to two very interesting and powerful experiences for two motivated individuals. A man crossing Niagara Falls and a man climbing a mountain. Two individuals who decided to redefine possible.  I am borrowing this idea of "redefining possible" from  Spencer West and Free the Child - one of the two men I previously mentioned.  If you have not followed his journey to reach Uhuru Peak, the summit of Mount Kilimanjarro what you might not know about Spencer is that he will be accomplishing this feat with out....feet. Training for a year, Spencer and the team set out Africa's tallest free standing mountain to raise funds for clean water projects in Africa.   Check out the team reaching the summit below. 

 Seven days later.......

The first video captures some insights into how Spencer's journey started.  His life changed course from what others anticipated what would happen.  In his case, a story was written even before it had a chance to unravel.   Sometimes that is what we need - a change in direction to re-educate our minds how to think, believe and dream differently about the path in front of us or the life we choice to live.   The second video is of Spencer achieving this incredible milestone!  One of the pieces that stood out to me as I followed Spencer was the incredible sense of team between the climbing group.  With a team, anything can be possible. 

What is on your bucket list?  Big or small redefine possible for yourself!  Who is on your team to help you achieve re-writing your story? 

Six Simple Resilience Practices - Week Six: Commit Explicitly to Your Resilience

Below you will find Doug Silsbee's 6th and final installment of his resilience practices writings.  We hope you have enjoyed learning about resilience from a coaching professional and are able to find ways to apply it to your own life.
_______________________________________________________

Commit Explicitly to Your Resilience

Most of us, at least most of the people that are reading this, are very willing to invest in learning particular competencies and capabilities that allow us to produce what we want in our lives. Too, most of us understand the importance of eating well, exercising, and taking care of ourselves.
However, for many, it is a new and revelatory way of thinking to recognize that resilience itself is a capacity that we can invest in, that we can build. Resilience is essential and pre-requisite for maintaining our focus, energy, and persistence in life. And, at the core, resilience is virtually synonymous with the self-generativity that produces aliveness, fulfillment and joy.
Thus, I differentiate resilience from a mere coping strategy, or a set of tools that allows us to endure more for longer. Rather, a commitment to resilience is in fact the entry point to a life-long pathway towards your own integrated development, including physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual components.
In saying this, I'm not assuming that's what you were looking for when you decided to read this. Many people discover a need for resilience simply through a felt need to better manage what is on their plates. Yet, when we really move into it, and we commit to our resilience as an on-going project, we slowly wake up into all the possibilities that a committed practice of self-cultivation reveals.So, now, you get to choose. Presumably, you've read the first five installments of this series. (If not, subscribe below for access.) Review them again. Remind yourself of which really spoke to you and opened something up. Choose perhaps two of these five strategies to really work with, and that complement each other.Then, create a plan. Be specific and concrete. In your plan, address:
·       What, specifically, will you do on a daily basis to work with that particular tool or practice? Weekly?
·       What structure will you build into your already busy life so that this keeps your attention?
·       For the sake of what are you doing this? How will you remind yourself of this?
·       Who will you make a request of in order to support you and hold you accountable?
·       What additional reading, coaching, or other resources will help you deepen your understanding of this and keep it fresh and evolving?
Notice your commitment. Is it firm and clear? Or, soft and gushy? If the latter, how can you mobilize your energy for this by re-orienting to your purpose for doing it? By being present with the real choice that it represents? By choosing a resilient perspective? By engaging someone else as a partner through making a request? By recognizing that, in a sea of commitments where you sometimes feel out of control, this is a place where you do have control?
Now, make it happen!


Doug Silsbee, PCC
Presence-Based Leadership Development
• Presence-Based Coaching for Leaders
• Training and Mentoring for Coaches
• Author, The Mindful Coach and Presence-Based Coaching

828-254-2021
http://dougsilsbee.com
3717 Bend of Ivy Rd.
Marshall, NC 28753

Six Simple Resilience Practices - Week Three: Make Requests

Doug Silsbee continues to shed light on what resilience really means and how we can achieve it.
______________________________________________________

Make Requests

I have coached many successful entrepreneurs and executives who struggle with their tendency to over-commit. These are people with rewarding jobs who love what they do, but who get exhausted and lose touch with themselves and their non-professional relationships, sometimes at tremendous personal cost.
Often, people like this (and I include myself!) don't see the places where others could help. We have built strong identities as Doers or Problem-solvers that perpetuate our tendency to over-commit.
A key resilience strategy is to be in the business of making requests. I often work in depth with coaching clients around this important competency, which many successful people do poorly! 

Requesting includes, but is much larger than, simply delegating tasks to others. When we make a request, it can be a request for a specific action, for a hamburger at a restaurant, for information, for someone else to take on part of what we're doing, or a move into a different kind of relationship. We make the request by identifying what we need and when we need it. Then, we engage in a conversation with someone else about the request, such that this person can understand and deliver what we need.As a resilience strategy, making requests is fundamental.
·       In order to formulate a request we have to look at ourselves in our situation and discern what we need within it. That's a significant move, and untangles us from the sometimes overwhelming nature of complex situations in which we can't find any suitable course of action.
·       Staying in action is central to resilience; making a request is a form of action. Whether or not the other person commits to delivering on our request, the act of requesting engages us with others and mobilizes energy, the antidotes to stuckness and overwhelm.
·       Third, the result of a request, made clearly and fulfilled by the person we asked, is that we now have support, a hamburger, a service, or something else that we have identified as a need. 
Work with this for a week. Note, during the course of the day, when you make requests. Bring more intentionality into this process, recognizing that the request itself is a powerful act. Several times a day, take the time to clarify what you need in a situation, and formulate a specific request that you can make of someone, which, if fulfilled, will be helpful to you. Then, make the request and see what happens.

 



Doug Silsbee, PCC
Presence-Based Leadership Development
828-254-2021
http://dougsilsbee.com
3717 Bend of Ivy Rd.
Marshall, NC 28753