Thoughts To Begin the New Year - By Calvin Harris H. W., M.

A few ideas as we move into 2023

Here we are in January, as yet another year has come to an end.

Many of you have a special association with the Holiday season. Some with huge Christmas parties.  Others may have put extra pressure on themselves to hit their targets and engagements for a full social calendar that spans November through December.

There were those of you who were maneuvering around relationship issues for the holiday season, a time that seems to elicit family drama.

Yet with the ringing of bells and blowing of horns at midnight, we heralded in a new year on January 1.

We find Living seems to slow down after the 1st, all of a sudden calmer, and you a bit more mindful. Life seems to move at a different pace, you may have even taken a conscious different approach to how you will live the day, the year, or the rest of your life. Maybe between the meals and partying of the last months, you had come to some conclusions as to how you would close out the year and how you would begin this new one. Now that things have slowed, you may feel it’s time to prep plans or at least focus on your plans for the upcoming year.  

Yes, it is that time again to take a breath, to look around your world, or maybe even recline with some of those personal reflections on how the year went. You may want to track to see if your end game is still in sight, or has your goal line been moved up, or to see what could have slowed you down or stopped you from reaching your end goal  before the clock ran out.

Kudos for those who had taken to heart and done the mid-year “checkup” recommended July 2022,  because you may be a bit ahead of the game (See the July 26, 2022 -Time For The Half Time Huddle blog in siteofcontact.net ).

So, to be clear, I am not talking about making new year’s resolutions, but I am talking about planning the year ahead; I’m talking about potential changes in how you’d handle your personal life, business, or career life moving forward.

While we are looking forward to a new year, let us always be in the Now. We also want to be cognizant to Live each moment of our lives with self-compassion which will help us live each day fully present and focused on enjoying life. If you are not enjoying life, then that is a must to incorporate into your life plan.

This is to say  that we want to be balanced in our life, not only to stay practical ( yes, we still have to pay our bills, and still have responsibilities towards others), But to remember in your new year plan, to incorporate ‘enriching your life’, as if it was a survival mask that you put on first, to be able to carry out that feat for others.

Journaling is a good resource for focus about your goals, challenges, and accomplishments.  No matter where you are in life, if you are not journaling, you want to, for it is a good place to start to turn your life around or keep it on track.

Beginning a Journal in January would be a perfect time to start. Let’s Think about January 1st of each new year as a beginning to a  new start on life.  Then adding to that a journal each year as a way to create a new start with a clean slate. You can hit the reset button and do things differently, if need be. It doesn’t matter if you consider the past year a good or a bad year. Journaling gives you a chance for a better one in the Coming Year.

So, Celebrate or Cry over the past year. But never forget that life moves forward, and you are going to engage with it one way or another. Why not try consciously and doing it on your own terms.

Questions you would want to consider for clarity when writing  your journal are these:

What do you want to focus on in the new year?

What do you want to do for yourself, your relationships, or career, in this new year?

If you have planned out the year, then ask yourself what will you do if things don’t go according to plan? (Remember, it is not wise to think that Every detail  in a Plan will go as planned. Be prepared for setbacks.)

Think - What can I control? An example of this is if you are a writer, then you may say: “I’m going to publish one article a week,  and I will spend one day a week on promoting that article.” This is something You can directly see yourself in control of achieving.

Another example would be if  you were in business for yourself, you can’t control how many people buy your products without  focusing in on your effort and the effectiveness of your skills.  You may want to consider how many people is it possible for you to reach? What steps are you going to take to reach them? How well do you know your product or service, to have someone else want to purchase it?

A year is enough time to make a lot of things happen. One can make a big impact by doing small increments of working toward your goal each day, so that in time, after a few weeks to a few months, you will find you are mastering skills, working on your character, and building relationships that are better than you have ever had before.

In this new year you may find that chasing your dreams, might mean finding out that the time has come when you will have to stop doing what you are doing in the way you were doing it. You need to move it up a notch or have it disengaged from its present form. To do that, you will need to bring self-awareness. This will notify you as to whether to keep at it, or to decide if this is the time to pivot or quit a particular action.

Self-awareness is a skill that can take years to develop, or that can be shortened by working with a Mentor or Coach. When you use Self-awareness combined with Self-Reflection you will see that  Life is full of paradoxes, and like Alice in the Looking Glass, that there is never one relative truth or ‘right’ path. The only path that’s right for you is the path YOU chose, and that may not be the same one that you are on.

Self-reflection is a powerful way to discover your goals, strengths, and weaknesses. It requires space — a chance to quiet the mind and to be still, to take advantage of the options afforded to you.

Now with a focus and thinking about the new year, don’t forget to be in the moment, to make work equal play; To make time for self-reflection and to have self-awareness; and to have a good time engaging and enjoying the company of others. 

And when January 1st comes around in the following year, you wake up with these practices under your belt.  You are ready to make work into play out of your plans and goals; and you are looking forward to conscious success, one small step at a time.

Happy New Year.

Calvin

Manifesting Your Dreams And Goal by Calvin Harris, H. W., M.

Manifesting Your Dreams and Goals

If you are not manifesting your dreams and goals, it could be because of your weekly ritual or what some call Habits that are not allowing for it.

I would like to call your  attention to two ideas that can change everything about getting results:

1). We want to go beyond your ideas on achievement, to look at the quality of your Actions that are used to bring about your goals and achievements.  

AND

2)  More important than the ‘action’ is having an open, mentally fertile environment with others to allow for creativity and critical thinking to take place.  If you are in a state of mental isolation, your ability to take action can be hampered or killed.

We all, at one time or another, have been hampered, felt overwhelmed and unfocused, or have procrastinated over our best and boldest ideas, letting them fall by the wayside.

If you find yourself in this state,  stop beating yourself up over it and instead, look to the cause and perhaps a solution.

You see, it may be in your programing, in how you approach a situation, it may be in the way you have always done things in the past;  Projects you just jumped into; projects handled pretty much unconsciously, automatically processing them the same way you have done for decades. This type of action has been called working from your monkey mind, or on automatic pilot, or your habitual way of getting something done.

This is unconscious programming, which repeats within you, and determines how you focus, execute, and achieve projects, goals, and dreams.

If the aim for results do not appear,  and it occurs time and again, this means many of us are wasting time, energy, and money on what we think is our goals but turns out to be busywork that leads us away from our goals or buries us in a “paralysis of analysis”  or the chasing of bright shiny objects.

Then at some point, we must become conscious of our situation and say, “I have had enough.”

You may come to the discovery of needing to be supported and being accountable.

You may begin to seek help. It may be in the form of taking a class;   attending a group; or seeking a Mentor or Life Coach to work with.  Hey, these things can start to turn things around for you.

Working with others can allow you to break the chains of mental isolation.   Consciously tapping into your creative genius that allows you freedom from the cycles of mediocrity, and allows you to love what you are producing.

Yes, it may take a personal trainer, life coach, or mentor to get you the support and accountability you need.

That enables you to become more conscious of your goals and planning; To steer you in the direction you want to go, and to maintain the progress you want to achieve. This happens through regular check-ins, being held accountable, and having the support to keep you focused and on track.

The bottom line is that you want to reconstruct Conscious Intention over Automatic Habit Responses, informing new habits that consistently turn your dreams, ideas, goals into visible concrete results.

Contact me for a discussion about your needs.

Aloha,

Calvin

Advanced Mentoring Workshop

Using Experience As A Source of Learning And Development

The Program is outlined as follows:

Advanced Mentoring Workshop

“Everything that happens to you is your Teacher. The secret is to sit at the feet of your own life and be taught by it.”

~ Gandhi

As organizations and businesses grow, their need for qualified Mentors grows, as does their need to develop the next generation of Mentors.

But that’s easier said than done, right?

What we see happening in many organizations and businesses is that they end up promoting people who are great at their current job but are unable to mentor others. The trouble then becomes attracting or developing top talented Mentors, which can cause an organization or company to end up with people that show gaps in mentorship abilities or other soft skills.

What is needed is clarity around, and a plan for, mentorship and leadership development. This starts with individuals.

Are you an individual wanting to step up to the call?

The Mentoring Workshop Can Help

-- This is How:

· In this 24-month training, you will get steps for, and guidance in, creating a Mentorship Development Pipeline

· When implementing these steps, you’ll be part of a group culture focused on growth and competence

· The Program’s success comes from an active process of small steps and “Fly efforts”

· The Mentoring Workshop provides a continuously supportive environment for every step along the way

· With this mentoring training program, you will grow in assuredness and have more self-awareness

Organizations grow through well trained, knowledgeable, and talented Mentors.

· Make a commitment to take your place alongside this select group of individuals – representing mentorship at its best

Be a Part of the Mentors’ Pipeline Next program set for 2024

More information to follow later this year 2023

Make A Referral

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Referral Program

Do you know someone who you think might benefit from my services? Let me know and I will get in touch with them!

I don’t believe in strong arm sales techniques or pushy salespeople, but I do love talking life strategies, and working with people who genuinely want and are willing to do what it takes to make life changes.

Contact me to see if we can collaborate - things2cal@gmail.com

Our success won’t just happen. It is the result of a strong commitment to our relationship and with your goals.

I'd like to also thank those of you, who have taken your time to refer to me, someone you know who you felt these services can benefit.   I value your trust and appreciate your confidence.

Calvin

Tools for the Self Directed Life

Things to Do to Move You Past Self-Doubt

by Calvin Harris H. W., M.

Photo by Scot Williams

In our August 2018 issue of SiteOfContact, we discussed the importance of ‘Mental Toughness’ as part of your Life - Skills Tool Box. We talked about such tools as imagination, grit, consistency, and re-tooling habits to move you towards your mastery in life, even in a transitional economy.

An issue we all deal with from time to time, is this post's focus: Not being able to Get Started, and or Indecision, and or Non-actions caused by Self- doubt.

Victor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, founder of logotherapy, and author of Man’s Search for Meaning suggest: “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

I am reminded of a story my teacher, Thane, the Master Teacher of an Esoteric School (called The Prosperos) use to tell. 

Horse Photo by Angi Carelli

A blacksmith, a man that made and repaired horseshoes, was being squeezed out of business due to the invention called the Automobile.  Cars were replacing the horse, and the need for his craft was dwindling down to nothing.  He had to re-imagine himself,  he had to see himself, not in the ‘horseshoe’ business, but in fact, in the ‘Transportation’ business if he were to survive.  To understand this new business model,  would take for him to open up to new possibilities for his skills and craft in expanding his business options. 

Car Part by Jason Beamguard

A client I was coaching years ago in the auto repair business, complained that his competitors were getting more of the business in his area than he was and because of that, he may have to close his doors. His focus was so much on his competitors rather than on his business that he was unable to take actions, or to make the needed changes to keep the business solvent due to his indecision and self-doubt. That's when he came to me. In the course of our session, I asked him: Who is your biggest competitor? While he was thinking about it I held up a mirror and said, "there in the mirror."

I pointed out his biggest challenge was the thoughts that he allowed to run wild through his own mind, such as his competing with time running out and his preconceived ideas of how things should be. Once this was understood, a shift in his thinking took place, he relaxed. Then we began to brainstorm on how to lower his pricing, also bring his cost down and profits up. He focused in on the business, how that ran compared to others operating in that business. He came up with a plan, customers would bring in their own replacement parts, and he would perform the service and labor, but where he would differ from his competitors who offered similar service was that he would offer a customer satisfaction guarantee on work or service,  his competitors had no such warranty package.  

In that moment, he had gone from an embittered competitor, crestfallen in confidence and a failing balance sheet to a self-empowered master of his own fate.

John Herschel the famous mathematician, astronomer, and inventor is reported as saying: “Humans always have fear of an unknown situation – this is normal. The important thing is what we do about it. If fear is permitted to become a paralyzing thing that interferes with proper action, then it is harmful. The best antidote to fear is to know all we can about a situation.”

The moment you find yourself challenged in your head, stewing in doubt or overwhelmed  I suggest taking this actions:

Statue called Anguish

1. When you slip up, get help to get back on track as quickly as possible.

Ask someone you trust to listen and advise on how, if they were faced with a similar situation, would they get back on track. This can have benefits by offering you an objective perspective on the issue and help to get you out of your preconceived thought loops, and perhaps into a brainstorming mode.

2. Do an On-line inquiry into the problem. 

A search engine like Google can search Case Studies; Creative Marketing; Growth Strategy; or Success Stories. You may be surprised at how fast you find ideas that can help solve your challenges and erase the self-doubt.

3. Road-test the advice and data you receive. 

The world is your oyster —Once you've determined your real challenge and the new model for action, then use them to your advantage, getting out of your own head. Your task is to see yourself in a whole new way, creating a new narrative beginning with the idea of you as a Conscious Creator and Observer of your circumstance; you want to observe those concepts that seem to control, drive, and sometimes divert your life and then use it for an alchemy of change.

The beauty in the consciousness of these new components, these new models, is that they lead to a boost in imagination. and building our skills. These areas begin to strengthen each other, and  this new looping  model of intelligence becomes seamless. As this process grows and improves upon itself, it becomes easier for meaning and empowerment to manifest in our lives.

The Layers of Being William Floyd

 The Meaning of Life is to give Live Meaning.

"I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom." - Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Life Coaching: The Razor's Edge of Mentoring

This post could also be titled as “The Catch-22 of Telling People What to Do.” For in my work with people, topics such as

SUCCESS • HEALTH • WEALTH • SEXUAL FULFILLMENT

seem to come up all the time. Also questions such as :

“Am I in the right job for me?”

"Should I marry this person?"

"What can I do to make my body look better?”

“Is this a better career choice for me to make the money?”

In my practice of helping people come to their sense of Holistic Living these are just a few of the typical questions I tend to receive from clients who come to me for insight into the workings of their lives.

Years ago, in the 1980s, which were in my early days of working with clients in the use of self-help classes, one such course I designed and taught was the male-oriented Grooming Dynamics course (which to my surprise and delight worked equally well with female clients).  Back then I would have done my damnedest to answer such questions as those posed above and done it with some sort of definitive “yes” or “no” response. After all, these people were paying me for that type of advice, right? 

Over the years, an evolution and maturity have taken place in my practices of Life Coaching and Mentoring. With expanded listening techniques I now find myself being subtler, more cautious, in my answers and, I hope, more responsible in my approach toward my duties as a Mentor / Coach, for I’ve thought long and hard about what these duties really entail. Such as: Am I truly there (as a Mentor / Coach) to make up my clients’ minds for them concerning significant life decisions? More importantly, perhaps: What are the real consequences – for both the client and myself – of saying things that could alter a person’s life forever? As tempting as it may sometimes be to “help” a person through a genuinely difficult period, there is a thin line between truly helpful counsel and unwise interference with another person’s destiny.

I can think of an example that may show what I mean: Many years ago, a friend called to say he was signing up to join the Peace Corps and within the next few months would be traveling with a group through South America. He had never set foot outside the United States, so he was eagerly looking forward to this opportunity and began preparing for his trip. Just out of curiosity, and without telling him, I decided to check international news sources to find out what I could about the current situations in those countries – and was somewhat uncomfortable to find a host of challenging diplomatic, political, and / or military challenges occurring that could impact him while he was on this trip. Yes, there was the matter of safety that was being addressed by the Peace Corps, but by and large it was the sort of backdrop I myself would probably have avoided were I planning a trip and had this information.

What to do? My first reaction was to do the “altruistic” thing by telling him what I had found and then go on a volunteered rant of my advice on the matter, hopefully sparing him the problems of a potentially terrible trip. A few days later, before I had the chance to tell him what I found, he came in so excited about his plans, what it meant to his future, on and on . . . . His words caused me to take a step back from revealing my intel and to think about words that I have heard from many sources before, “Never volunteer advice or teaching uninvited.” These were words that seemed so timely in that situation. It made me reflect all the more deeply on my tendency to offer counsel to friends or family even when it wasn’t asked for.  So I buttoned my lip and wished him the best trip possible.

Well, as it turned out, my friend’s trip proved to be a life-changing experience in ways neither of us could have foreseen. While he was in one of those remote regions of South America, a local villager had an accident and suffered serious injuries; my friend, who had already gone through American Red Cross basic first aid training and had a working knowledge of the Spanish language, became involved in the life-saving efforts until medical assistance could arrive. The scene, I could imagine, was one filled with chaos and anxiety. Yet for my friend this experience marked a key turning point in his life. Not only did it bring him into contact with an aspect of a foreign culture he wouldn’t have experienced otherwise, but it also served as a catalyst for his becoming more involved with humanitarian activities on a global scale. And there was a slim chance none of this would have even happened had I opened my mouth and volunteered my sage opinion.

A Fine Line

Since then, I’ve attempted to be much more conscious of how and when I go about freely dispensing advice to people. But what if a client asks me for advice on a major life decision? Does that violate a principle of noninterference?

If it becomes as strong a question as to send a flag up my emotional pole, then I have to stop and ask myself, “What then would my motivations for giving the advice be?” Sometimes giving advice makes a counselor, or Mentor, or Coach feel important and knowledgeable, but then the advice becomes ineffective. Sometimes it may even foster a non-therapeutic dependency such that the client does not learn how to solve problems himself or herself but merely how to ask for more advice. The sage saying, “Teach a man to fish,” comes to mind.

My goal with my clients is to be consciously nondirective. After all, who among us is truly wise enough to know all the ramifications of any given situation, whether acted upon or not? I know that no human is omniscient. We certainly cannot know all the variables of any situation, so we need to approach our discipline with a certain humility regarding our own grasp of “what is best” – or what isn’t.

I find myself asking more and more if a certain experience should be avoided simply because it may prove physically or emotionally difficult? How can we really know for sure what lessons a person might need to learn from a certain challenging situation? The history pages are filled with challenged individuals whose lives were changed – or whose lives, in turn, changed the world – by seemingly difficult experiences. Much as I hate to admit it, I fear that, 40 years ago, I probably would have done all I could to steer such a person away from potentially difficult situations.

So we find ourselves on the Razor's Edge as to what is the solution. Do we simply refrain entirely from giving advice or pointing the client in one direction or another?

Not necessarily. But first we realize that we cannot think about the clients questions from the viewpoint of our own values and well-being. The question has to be reframed.

First, I try to remember that I am consciously playing a role. My role could be as simple as a passenger in a car with a map on my lap of the destination. The driver of the car (the client) has come to a fork in the road. I can point out the different prongs in the forked road, with the amount of miles each has, as well as curves, hills, switchbacks, and scenic views each would have, but it is ultimately the driver that must decide which course to take.

Secondly I and the client are in a state of conscious investigation of our Emotional Intelligence. (That is, coming to recognize the part emotions play in the decision-making process and how that play of emotions might have unconscious factors attached that affect decisions in thoughts and behavior.)

Thirdly, I provide my clients with strategies for how to come to the Truth of their problems. I am not there to make up my clients’ minds for them, nor to tell them how to live their lives; rather, it’s to draw out of them accurate information vs. unconscious playback loops of what they believe to be best: help them make their own decisions by drawing out their own inner wisdom and intuition in situations.

An example to illustrate how this might work is: An individual comes to me, tells me he is an A-Type personality and asks whether he should marry someone who, it turns out, is also a heavily A-Type personality. Taking a simplistic and judgmental approach, I might well look at this situation and tell him that two A-type individuals forming a partnership could make for a fairly competitive or volatile combination and, for that reason, might best be avoided. But taking a more nondirective, non-coercive approach, I could instead engage the client in what he is looking for from this relationship. I could ask the client to point out the potential problems he could encounter along with the potential perks that could arise from such a union. Indeed, such competition and or volatility might prove to be the very thing that a given individual might want in a relationship. Once clarified it is the client’s decision as to which way to go with it.

I can recall hearing my teacher say: “If you want to end a relationship with such and such person, simply stop arguing with them. They’ll get bored and go search out someone else to do battle with!” The key here is not to tell the client what to do, but merely help to illuminate his choices.

Helping Clients Help Themselves

The other point I want to make, which is many times so simple or apparent that it is disregarded, is best illustrated by a quote from Douglas Adams, who said, “I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.” Which is in keeping with the conversation between Alice and the Cheshire Cat, those fictional characters from the book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

Alice asks the Cat “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where–” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

“–so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.

“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

There is no such thing as the one right choice. It is more to do with the uniqueness of each of us. We must learn to get to know and then honor our authentic selves; then comes a realization that at the root of the things we desire is the authentic self within. It is that driver, that evolutionary impulse that has driven humanity forward and expresses within us, through us, and as us; that spark that drives us to want to be ourselves and know ourselves through the symbols of our desires. Decoding the symbols leads us to who we are meant to be. This is the only way we can ever find true happiness and fulfillment.

In some ways, even more importantly: My job as an Ontologically-based consultant is to help clients to get in touch with their own reserves of intuition in situations and to draw upon those reserves when making their decisions regarding these situations. Like our fairytale characters Alice and the Cheshire Cat these archetype symbols prove a useful analogy. The symbol is never really intended to simply answer questions about major life decisions, but rather to provide a series of metaphorical images that could serve to unlock an individual’s own inner wisdom regarding those problems. By reflecting on a symbol that arises in response to a question, one begins to understand the hidden dynamics underlying everyday situations.

Archetype symbols have been with us for centuries, in every culture and on every continent.  There is profound wisdom contained within them, that draws on unconscious resources about life or our hidden talents - if we could but learn to trust and tap into them by slowing down the mind chatter to accept this input when contemplating a decision; to be aware, to listen for that certain “yes!” whispering from deep within as you contemplate your options. More often than not, I find that people already know at an intuitive level the right thing to do – they’re just looking for an outside confirmation of that inner knowing.

How I’ve come to see my role as Mentor in the lives of people who come to me for advice or insight is to realize that each person that I engage with has a unique life, as vivid and complex as my own, with their own calling, which is a calling demanding to be drawn out and realized by them.

The stance I take regarding my role in this process isn’t popular with every one of my clients, especially those who are looking for someone to take responsibility for their lives. But with each passing year I’m convinced that this is the wisest approach both for them and myself. It leaves me with a clearer conscience about my impact on others’ lives and in my own role as a Mentor / Coach.

Aloha,