Acting4Life – Life Coaching Tools You Can Use! e-newsletter edition#1, February 2007 Greetings!!!   Dear Coaches, Coachees and Prospective Clients!!!Welcome to the first edition of the Acting4Life newsletter.It is intended to provide self-coaching tools to anyone who feels the desire.Coaches, feel free to use these tools, and please – share your own with me!Coachees, you may recognise some of these tools – yes – you WERE the co-authors in a sense, and these diagrams arose from our sessions together. Thank you! Prospective Clients, I’m business building at this time so do avail of that free one hour coaching session and my fantastic start-up rates. Don’t forget to tell your friends! Who I coach: I coach in the US (via an New Mexico telephone number) and in Ireland (via Skype/phone). I have clients in California, New Mexico, NewYork and Dublin. Whether you are dealing with a difficult boss, going for that dream job, unclear about your life’s purpose, or going through a period of change in your life. I CAN COACH YOU! I have met, spoken to, or been in email contact with all of you. However, I hate spam, so please feel free to unsubscribe from this e-newsletter at any time. Or, if you think it’s putting some positive energy out there into the world, why not forward it to your friends, co-workers, and family? Coaching is doing a good thing for people, you never know who could use some clarity around those decisions, big & small, we all come up against in our lives! Thank you for taking the time to read this. I look forward to hearing from you, Sincerely, Lucy McBride Contact Lucy for more information – click here to find out how!   Tool #1: The Integrity Line Pinpoint an issue in your life around which you feel there is a lack of integrity, or simply, something that doesn’t feel right.Click on the link below to see an example of an Integrity Line, then:1) Draw a straight line on a piece of paper. This line is the ‘integrity line’.2) Like drawing a graph, try to track when you first stepped off the ‘integrity line’ and draw a little node or dot, like a station on a metro map, and label it: e.g. When I promised to do such and such and I didn’t really want to do it.3) From this point your new line will go downwards, veering off the ‘integrity line’ 4) The line may rise up a little, back towards integrity on occasion, perhaps when you tried to make the situation you found yourself in ‘workable’, draw another node and make your line rise a little (however much you think is right). This exercise can give you a really great visual on how far you have strayed off the path of your own integrity of self. The Integrity Line Tool – click here Tool#2: Divide & Conquer   Overwhelm can be caused be many different factors but the exercise of listing all the things you feel you have to do, or should be doing, can help alot.Open the tool called ‘Divide & Conquer – A Tool for the Overwhelmed by clicking on the link below.Separate each item on the list into three separate categories:1) Ideas or things to do in the future that you have, as yet, taken no action on, and need NOT take action on immediately.2) Things you have already taken action on, but are waiting for a response from others i.e. you have no control over. 3) Things that you can control, i.e. you can take action on. The things in categories 1 and 2 are ‘filed away’ for the future until something happens to move them into category 3. We are now more free, mentally, to deal with the things in category 3. The key, however, is in taking action on these items!!! Divide & Conquer Tool – click here   Tool #3: The Pleasure-Meter Here’s a tool to help you find pleasure in everyday things!At the end of each day use The Pleasure-Meter to rate how each little event that day made you feel. Click on the link below for an example.At the end of one week, you now have a great visual as to what you enjoy about your day.Now that you are conscious of what gives you pleasure or ‘re-creation’ on a daily level, think of finding ways to include more of what you enjoy in your week…. take a longer shower than usual… make time to savour that wonderful morning coffee… The Pleasure-Meter Tool – click here Tool #4: The Joyous Yes!   Think of a situation in which you find yourself that you no longer feel ‘happy’ in, or that is giving you some ‘grief’ or weighing on your mind. When did you lose your JOY around it?Think back. What did you do, say or promise at that precise moment which turned your ‘Joyous Yes!’ into resentment or ‘hard work’.The joyous yes is often called (in coaching) the ‘Hell, yes!’ I find it more useful to call it the former as I sense that we can better remember moments of lost integrity by what we were feeling, or not feeling at the time.Coaching tool – ‘Tracking your Joyous Yes!’Click the link below to view The Joyous Yes worksheet and use it to complete the following exercise at the end of each week. 1) Write down all the things you said ‘yes’ to this week, commitments that you made, jobs you said you would do…. 2) Immediately move the ones that give you joy into the ‘Joyous Yes’ category 3) Of the ones left over, sift through them and anything you have serious doubts around, move them into the ‘No’ category. These require IMMEDIATE action in order to remedy your step away from integrity. 4) There may be things left in the ‘yes’ category about which you might be feeling a ‘well, yes, but not now,’ move these into the ‘Not Certain’ category. These items REQUIRE ACTION. This action may be in the form of a ‘KEEPING SOMEONE IN THE LOOP CONVERSATION’. It is important, that something which may lead to you feeling out of integrity with yourself in the future is communicated verbally and clearly to the recipient of your ‘yes’. Pick up the phone. Do it now!!!! I can’t stress how important this is. If it’s not a ‘Joyous Yes’ you will have some work to do around keeping yourself on the ‘integrity line’.   Information on Life Coaching Want to know more about Life Coaching?Go to my website by clicking the link below to find out!Don’t forget, you have a chance to avail of a free one hour coaching session – contact me to arrange a time! Go to my website – click here Lucy McBride