Halloween is upon us and if you have grade school age kids you know get to hear about all of the different costumes your kid wants – a bumble bee, a princess, a pirate, a zombie, and the list goes on and is ever changing.

As I child, I only remember a few costumes that were the full on, head to toe, mascot type suit.  They were hot and sweaty, I couldn’t see clearly with the mask on and I often tripped over some piece of the costume taking out many of my friends who were walking close to me.

The cool thing about Halloween though, is that pretty much no matter the costume, the end result is the same…a bag, or in my day a pillow case, full of candy.

Interestingly enough, some adults wear costumes every day.  People who are accountants by career but artists by hobby, or heavy handed driver type project managers at work but take a completely different approach to projects outside of work.

For me, I have worn the engineering costume, focused on tasks and suppressing extroverted and emotion based tendencies but am actually a people oriented, extroverted, expressive coach .

The truth about wearing the full-on costume, figuratively or literally, is that it takes much more energy to wear a costume than to be authentic.  You vision isn’t clear and you trip over yourself in the thoughts and actions you take.  You can even make others stumble with you in your lack of authenticity along the way.

Please hear me that I am not suggesting that people are single dimensional or can only have one trait that is their authentic self.  The truth is we are all multidimensional and have many traits that are expressed at various levels throughout our day and in each experience.

I propose that we all become aware of who we are, what drives us and where our interests lie.  That we accept all aspects of ourselves and commit to sharpening skills and smoothing out the rough spots. And, look at where we can utilize each of the authentic traits we have and express them at the time and situation that serves us best.

Let’s reserve the costumes for Halloween and live as our authentic selves every other day of the year!

What costume are you willing to no longer wear?

I recently took a family vacation to Disney World and had an amazing time.  It was non stop action for 4.5 days.  Lots of walking, riding rides, eating, standing in lines and LOTS of people.

There were 14 of us, 3 kids and 11 adults, on this vacation and in the entire time we were there, there was only one small meltdown on the day we left. .  While I tried to contain myself, 4:30am is not when I am at my best 🙂

During our stay we were all able to go, go, go because we were having such a great time.  We were experiencing so much joy that we hardly even noticed how worn down we were becoming.

It wasn’t until we got home that we ALL realized that we were simply exhausted.  While meeting with my coach the following week she said “you sound fatigued”.  Because I practice regular self care, fatigue is not something that I experience very often but I sure experienced it after vacation!

Fatigue is not a bad thing IF full recovery is accomplished as well.  I personally prefer to have a great balance of expending energy and fully recharging my batteries.  I am at my best in all that I do when I schedule in one day each week of total down time (naps and all).

The coaching points are…
1. When you love what you are doing you have more energy and stamina than when you don’t love what you’re doing.
2. When you are experiencing great joy in something, be sure to build in self care moments so that fatigue does not occur often.

What and how frequent of recovery methods do you want to build into your schedule for your body and mind?

I had a very insightful conversation with a highly successful and retired CFO (I will call him Joe) who worked in the long term care and consulting industries.   He shared his experiences with other executives and his own awareness of how coaching benefited the  organizations he worked with.

In our discussion Joe shared his experience working with all types of executives and including an “almost” billionaire owner/executive and members of his executive team.  I shared my experience with the various executive entrepreneurs and corporate executives I have worked with as a coach as well as an individual contributor to organizations.   We found ourselves digging into how executives deal with change and why they hire or don’t hire coaches to support them with change.

Joe gave the example of a time where the owner of a company hired a coaching/consulting agency to provide support and perspective in order to optimize the company’s profitability, productivity and growth.  The most fascinating thing was the coaching/consulting firm shifted the initial focus completely away from working directly with the owner/leader of the company, to coaching the executives on how to work with the owner of the company.  INTERESTING!!  Additionally, the owner knew there were personal business issues to be addressed such as extensively long work hours that ultimately took away from his family that he adored and cherished.

Now, I can see how the coaching firm had a duty to meet the objective of optimizing the company’s profitability, productivity and growth – to shift focus away from the owner if he was not willing to be coached.  But I can’t help but feel there was truly a missed opportunity for this particular business owner.  The missed opportunity of growth that would result in long term success, but more importantly joy and fulfillment.  As John C. Maxwell said “Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.”

The question that came to my mind is “was the client truly committed to being uncoachable or was he just committed to reaching the original goals first“. As a coach, I am extremely passionate about supporting people in not only reaching their goals but doing it with ease and joy in ALL areas of their lives.

My hope for the business owner is that in moving through the coaching process, he had some insights and awareness that ultimately will drive him to want to be just as successful in leading a joy filled life as he was in leading a strictly successful business life.

Over the past several weeks I have experienced some amazing personal and professional transformations.  What caused it??  I made room.

The transformation started when I disengaged from the part time corporate contract work I was doing.  The moment I gave my resignation the creativity for my business started to flow at rapid speed.  New ideas about who to partner with, projects to do, workshops to create etc, etc, etc.  It was such an incredible feeling of creativity and freedom I had to pinch myself.  I was truly amazed.

With my creativity flowing full throttle, I next attended Destination Breakthru, a luxury retreat for entrepreneurs.   At the retreat I experienced many incredible things including a blind tasting of an amazing five course meal, being at the top of Vail peak and and declaring my vision for 2011/2012, a wonderful spa treatment and the list goes on and on.  I am most grateful to the 9 powerful women I connected with that are now part of my tribe.  Thank you ladies!

I got home and got to work.  Creating marketing material and workshops, holding many complimentary coaching sessions, connecting with existing friends and making new ones, and spending time with my family.

I am still in that space of creativity but more than that, I am in a space of expansion.  A place of outpouring of gratitude, sharing of wisdom, opening my heart and mind to all there is to experience.

The big lesson that I learned here is that to be in a place of expansion, we have to clear out space.  Whether it be removing toleration’s, letting go non-productive employees, ditching processes that aren’t proving effective or disengaging from that which stifles our creativity.  We have to make room for growth.

Coaching questions…In what areas of your business and life do you want to grow?  What ways can you make room so that you can expand and grow?