Life Coaching Tips Revealed: How to Engage Your Power Source

Take time now to notice your personal energy. How are you feeling? Notice how present you feel in your body. Notice your posture, and whether or not you are tired. Just notice. Are you fuzzy? Are you clear? Are you joyful? Are you energized?

What impact does your physical and mental energy have on your ability to make decisions, get things done and engage with others? Does your energy and self-care make you feel like you are being your own hero, at work and at home? Does the way you care for yourself honor you and your work/life balance?

If you are taking fantastically great care of yourself, wonderful! How can you engage even more of your power source to create added vitality and presence in your life? Can you use your power source to create even stronger leadership and work/life balance? Here are six life coaching tips to engage your power source for more powerful living and energy leadership.

Life Coaching Tip #1: Breathe! How are you breathing? Do you take deep breaths and stay conscious in your breath? Or, is your breathing short and shallow? Breathe deeply, inhale and exhale. Not only does this put more fresh oxygen into your body, it also provides a way of keeping your mind present and focused.

Life Coaching Tip #2: Take a break! You need a break every 90-120 minutes throughout your day. Stop what you’re doing, get up, move around and go get something to drink. Whatever you do, the point is to “disengage” from your activity for a short bit. Taking a break will help you sustain “full engagement” throughout the rest of your day.

Life Coaching Tip #3: Pull your shoulders back! This is a no slump zone! Pull those shoulders back, stand up or sit up straight, engage your core muscles (abdominal and low back muscles) and see what shifts for you from this posture.

Life Coaching Tip #4: You are what you eat! Remember this old saying? Well, it has interesting implications when it comes to leadership and engagement. Many studies link food to mood, disease, depression, fuzzy thinking, etc. I suspect you don’t need me to tell you that. Notice the way food impacts you. Do you feel energized and focused after a meal loaded with processed foods and junk? Probably not.

Make a shift in your diet by integrating more whole grains instead of refined carbohydrates, eating more fruits and vegetables instead of sweets, and opting for foods that are baked instead of fried. You get the picture. This is all stuff you know. You’ve probably heard it a thousand times. Will this information affect your work/life balance? Will you make a choice to take action and create a shift?

Life Coaching Tip #5: Hydrate! Living on coffee and sodas all day? Do you notice that your thinking is a bit slower? Got water? Drinking water is an undervalued source of physical energy renewal. Did you know that by the time you’re thirsty, you are already dehydrated? Research has shown that when you dehydrate a muscle by as little as 3%, it loses 10% of its strength and 8% of its speed. Dehydration compromises concentration and coordination. Imagine the effect on energy leadership and thinking. Don’t let yourself get dehydrated. Drinking water at regular intervals throughout the day will serve performance in a range of important ways.*

Life Coaching Tip #6: Move your body! No simpler way to say it. I’m not even going to go into starting an exercise program. It’s even simpler than that. Get up, move around, dance, stretch, whatever you want to do to move your body and get into action. Some of my energy leadership clients go into the bathroom during a break or before a meeting to dance in the stall to wake up and get present! Other clients have integrated “stretch breaks” into their days and meetings. Find something that will work for you and try it out. You’ll be surprised.

Engage your power source with these quick and simple life coaching tips that you can work into your days. Just paying attention to these tips can create a shift, and taking action on even one of them can create ripple effects on the rest of your life. Decide to take action today, play with taking a stand for your self-care, give yourself a bit more focus and see what shows up.

NOTE: Always consult your physician, or the appropriate medical or health professional, before embarking on any kind of exercise or nutritional program.

(*Source on Hydration facts: “The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal” by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz – An excellent book by the way!)

Business Coaching Tip: Dare to be PRESENT – or what’s the point?

As a business coach, I ask my clients, “Have you ever had any of these
experiences?”

~ You drive home from work and then don’t remember how you got
there.

~ You sit through a meeting or business coaching session and can’t
account for what happened in the meeting, the outcome or the
details.

~ You read a book to your child or grandchild and can’t recall what
the book was about.

~ You work out and have so much mind chatter that you’re not even
sure what muscles you were working.

~ You have a conversation with a colleague and miss the important
undercurrents of that discussion because your mind was elsewhere.

~ You give a presentation and miss the impact you’re having on the
audience because you’re too busy wondering, “How am I doing as a
public speaker?”

~ You have an argument, and you’re so busy proving your point, you
miss the others’ points completely AND any opportunity for
alignment.

~ You go home at night and spend time with your family, only to
think about everything that happened at work today and what’s
about to happen tomorrow.

Sound familiar? Perhaps the better business coaching question,
instead of “Have you ever experienced any of these?” is: “Have you
experienced any of these things today?”

We’re talking about presence. Being PRESENT is defined as “existing
or being in the time occurring NOW.”

I work with business coaching clients on several kinds of presence:
“Leader’s Presence”, “Emotional and Mental Presence” and “Physical
Presence.” It’s essential to pay attention to all three in order to be
aware of your impact, create intentional impact and be present to
your life. Because if you’re not present to your life, what is the point?
Truly. Think about that. IF YOU ARE NOT PRESENT TO YOUR LIFE -
WHAT IS THE POINT?

We’re given the beautiful gift of life, relationships, family, work we can
love, health, emotions, the ability to make an impact, gain work/life
balance and so much more. We could go through our days with our
minds in other places, missing all the beautiful gifts of the moment,
wishing we were an hour, a day or a week ahead. We could yearn to
be somewhere other than where we are NOW. Or we can go through
our lives, each day, conscious of each moment – easy or hard,
stressful or peaceful, mundane or exhilarating.

When we are fully present, we experience LIFE. We can see more
clearly what has to happen. We can see the truth about the moment.
We can see the truth about our impact. We can fully feel our feelings:
joy, anger, sadness or excitement. We are present.

It is from this place that life happens. It is in this place we actually
can find authentic emotions, and ultimately peace, in the moment.
It is in this place that we can better identify, as leaders in our own
lives, what needs to happen next.

Field Work Challenge: This month, notice when you’re present in
the moment and when you’re not. Do you find it challenging to
stay present 100% of the time? Most of us do. So, no big deal, just
notice the impact.

What do you miss out on when your mind is multi-tasking? On
what relationships and connections do you miss out? What
opportunities are lost? What shifts for you when you are present
to your life? What do you realize needs to be ‘cleaned up’ when
you are present? What shifts when you walk through your day
fully awake? Fully engaged?

When you notice you’ve lost presence, ‘recover’ and come back
to the moment. It’s actually that simple. Enjoy your month.
Savor your life. DARE to fully engage.