deep inquiry

Is It Time for Your Powerful Contribution?

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I’m so excited about contribution right now. In a few months, I will finally be finished writing my second book, Strong from Within! I just completed mentoring a client to coach his clients more deeply. I’m also supporting two clients right now in employing more people locally.

More people living strong from within. More people receiving deeper coaching so they can make their contributions. More people doing work they love right in their own communities. I feel deeply honored to facilitate these contributions.

What about you? What do you know is your powerful contribution? Or next powerful contribution?

  • Would you love support in getting your book written?
  • Do you have a gift to give your community?
  • Might I help you coach more deeply?
  • Are you soul-searching to discern your next contribution?
  • How could coaching support you in making your powerful contribution?

With so many aspects of life seeming unstable right now, the world needs your specific gifts, your irreplaceable contribution.

Is It Time for Your Powerful Contribution?

If you’d like to talk with me about coaching you, let’s use the wonderful energy of the new season to plant your seeds and bring your contribution to reality!

Our coaching conversation would be my gift to you. If we both sense it would be a good fit, we can talk about how we could work together.

If we’re not a good fit, that’s okay too. At the very least, we’ll have had a great conversation about your important contribution!

I begin work with only 2 or 3 new clients each season. If you sense one of them might be you, schedule your coaching conversation and apply here.

To making the world a better place, one powerful contribution at a time!

Join the conversation ~ post your insights, feedback and experiences below.

What If It Is the Voice of God?

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I made a big financial business mistake last year. I joined a program to teach me THE system for developing my own program without taking the time to understand the fine print and without noticing that several aspects of the program didn’t fit my values.

My StrengthsFinder Activator strength in its raw form has taken me to places like this before. I thought I had grown her up better than that. So humbling to still be so human. Oh my goodness.

Reflecting on what went wrong and how to go forward, I realized that I had forgotten to ask my Connectedness strength for input as I was deciding about the program. Several years ago, I had made Connectedness the Goddess in charge of all my strengths.

Connectedness tends to be much quieter than Activator. And she has direct, consistent access to God, Spirit, Source. If I listen.

Since getting out of the program, I have quit looking “out there” for the system. Instead, I’ve turned to my coach and to Connectedness to guide me to my perfect “system.”

It turns out my “system” isn’t a system at all. Instead, it’s instinctually following guidance. Specific, made-only-for-me, that I don’t even know I want or need guidance.

Following the impulse to clean up an awkward interaction with a previous client, which led to two new business opportunities.

Saying yes to going to the gym with a new friend when I had made a vow to never step foot in a gym this lifetime. Only to find out my body craves working out. I now love going to the gym faithfully twice a week. Who knew? For months, my family didn’t even believe I’d joined a gym.

My niece, Alisha, came to New Mexico to check it out for herself and had to take this picture of Ann in her new happy place.
My niece, Alisha, came to New Mexico to check it out for herself and had to take this picture of Ann in her new happy place.

Expressing a sadness to my ex-sweetie which led to a conversation neither of us can now remember how it went which led to us getting back together and creating an amazing new relationship that we fondly call 2.0.

None of these miracles happened because I asked God, “So, what do you want me to do today?” I simply followed my heart and intuition in the moment. Even when the guidance went against a vow I’d made, felt super uncomfortable or too vulnerable.

Ah, Connectedness.

Maybe that mistake wasn’t a mistake at all. Maybe it was the quickest way to get me back to me. After many months of ruminating about the mistake, that’s the first time I’ve said that out loud. Thank you for listening.

Join the conversation – post your insights, feedback and experiences below.

How Do You Answer the Call of the Season?

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This time of year endlessly fascinates me with the contrast of the natural call to go inward and the consumer call to run around out there.

I opted out of the consumer call almost 30 years ago.

And this year, because it’s been so warm and we haven’t yet seen our typical snow here in Northern New Mexico, I’ve been more outward-focused than usual.

Last night it occurred to me that I didn’t want to miss the sacred opportunity of this season.

How Do You Answer the Call of the Season?

How wonderful to notice that even many beautiful lights are held in deep darkness this time of year. (As seen on one of my neighbors’ house in Eldorado, New Mexico.)

Opportunities I’m noticing:

Waiting in stillness.

Receiving the gifts of solitude.

Embracing long shadows.

Slowing down.

Reflecting deeply into the night.

What about you? What are the sacred opportunities of this season for you?

As always, post your comments, experiences and insights below . . .

Happy Sacred Solstice!

How You Think about Life Actually Becomes Your Life

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Awhile back, as I was working with a client around the growing pains of her business, she noticed that she’d come to accept that there wasn’t any time for her personal life. Because that was her thinking, her life had become putting out one fire after another.

This alerted me to look more closely at my own thinking. For most of the past year, I’ve been telling myself that “the world” is too much for me. As a sensitive empath, it’s challenging for me to feel all the chaos. My solution had been isolating myself from the world more and more.

Recently, I realized I could shift my thinking to something more life-affirming.

I have this wonderful job in which I get to support people in proactively creating their lives and their work. My clients are willing to look within themselves and courageously create what’s important to them. It’s such a privilege to facilitate their transformations.

While I still don’t get out into the world much, I do feel better about my life because I’m thinking about how I AM contributing rather than what drains me. I’ve also given myself permission to spend more time alone in nature, reminding myself, yet again, that it restores me. I don’t need to judge it.

How You Think about Life Actually Becomes Your Life
When I think about this land and this rainbow as benevolent friends,
I feel happier and more accepting of my life as it is.

So, what about you? What have you been thinking about? What do you notice about how that has become your life?

Post your comments, experiences and insights below…

What Are These Weird Times Calling You To?

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In addition to natural disasters, racial and political unrest and mass shooting tragedy, many of my clients and friends are also experiencing weird, challenging and unsettling personal circumstances.

I’m no exception. I’m experiencing unrest in my business, with my mother and in my health. I’ve found that I’ve had to become disciplined about increasing my meditation practice, exercise, spending time alone in nature, speaking kindly to myself and asking for help.

What Are These Weird Times Calling You To?
Focusing on the beauty of the mud pattern in the arroyo

And then it occurred to me: maybe that’s what I’m being called to.

So what do I want to focus on? All of the weirdness and challenges or the opportunity to spend more time with my God, my body, the great outdoors and my loved ones who’re helping me?

So what about you? Does your life feel weird and uncomfortable right now? What might be calling you?

As always, post your comments, experiences and insights below . . .

What Do Your Clients Really Want?

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As professionals, we have a tendency to talk about our services in terms of our tools and processes. Our clients don’t care about how we do what we do. They want to know that we can help them get to what they desire. And to the deeper desire under that desire.

The more you deeply listen to what your potential clients and clients tell you, the more clearly and accurately you will understand their desires and their deepest desires under those desires.

If you’re a business coach, your clients might talk about making more money, doing more fulfilling work or getting more focused. For each client, what is beneath those desires? There are as many answers as there are clients.

Maybe one client wants to make more money to ensure her daughter can go to the college of her choice. Why is that important to her? Maybe she feels it’s her job to do all she can to set her daughter up for success.

Maybe another client wants to make more money to retire sooner. Why is that important to him? Maybe he would love to devote more time to his passion of restoring old trucks.

Maybe another client wants to make more money because she’s single and she wants to take good care of herself.

What Do Your Clients Really Want?

I have a deep desire to make more money so that I can spend even more time with my family and friends in beautiful, spacious natural environments.  (Taken Jan 18, 2017 from the top of Beaver Creek ski area on my 25th annual ski trip with my 3 sisters.)

If you’re a chiropractor or massage therapist, your clients might talk about feeling better or paying more attention to their bodies. What’s underneath that desire right now? Maybe they’ve had a health scare, maybe they want a health partner rather than trying to figure things out on their own or maybe they want to be more pro-active and self-sufficient by learning more about their health.

The more you ask potential clients and clients something like, “Tell me more about why that’s important to you,” the more you can understand their deepest desire and the more you can help them fulfill them.

What’s your sense of how you might go deeper with learning what your clients desire? I’d love your comments and insights below.