Eight Powerful Questions about Your Future - Work-Life Balance Articles

Eight Powerful Questions About Your Future
By Sharon Teitelbaum, MA, MCC, Sharon@stcoach.com

“Most people don’t plan to fail. They just fail to plan.” This old saying, which I learned from a coaching client who’s a financial planner, really applies to any area of your life where you want to make some positive changes.

The most powerful advice I can give you is to get absolutely clear on your intentions, and then keep those intentions top-of-mind as you go about your daily life.

The following questions are designed to help you identify your priorities and GET AT what your intentions are. If you are like most people, you have a nagging, vague sense of where you need a course correction, but your thoughts are too fuzzy and ragged to have much of an impact. Work through these question on your own, or contact me and we can work on them together. I have helped many successful people clarify their intentions and then live them.

These questions apply, whether you need to make major changes or simply fine-tune. The clearer you become with your intentions, the more powerfully they will impact your life.

1. What are your intentions for your next work chapter? Whether it's a job or your business or some third possibility, what do you want to bring to it that has worked for you before, what do you want to do differently, what do you want to bring forth from yourself for this new adventure, what experience are you looking for, and what kind of support do you need for that to happen?

2. What are the things you have tolerated or are currently tolerating (people, behaviors in yourself or others, low standards for this or that, etc), and how can you eliminate these tolerations as you move forward?

3. What experiences do you want to have had, 10 years from now, looking back over your previous 10 years? You might express these experiences in very concrete terms (“I want to have seen fields of tulips in bloom in The Netherlands”) or more abstractly (“I want to have learned to recover quickly from "mistakes," to have grown thick-skinned enough that I no longer dwell on things I wish I'd done differently,” or, “I want to do something groundbreaking with my team, where we all pull together and do something amazing.”)

4. What do you want to learn in your next professional chapter, whether at your current position or somewhere else?

5. Do you want to create some shift in any of these areas?

• simplifying your life
• completing incompletes (with projects, with people)
• handling money, creating reserves
• taking care of your mind, body, spirit
• extending your boundaries, being well protected (insurance, as well as more abstract protections)
• raising your standards
• re-orienting around your values, strengths, what delights you
• creating a healthy support network

6. What are the things or kinds of things that could get you off track or out of balance as your life gets busier, and what can you do in advance so that doesn't happen?

7. What are the ways you are holding yourself back from dreaming big -- ways you are telling yourself to only shoot for, say, St Louis, rather than the moon?

8. What do you most fear about your future? Get very vivid and clear and detailed about the fear; get friendly with it. Then figure out a way you would deal with “That Thing” -- not just how you would survive it, but how could you come through it with strength and even some grace? Then figure out yet another way you could deal with it.  What is your intention regarding this fear?

If you could use some support for any part of this process, including how to make your intention become a reality, do not hesitate to contact me for an initial consultation at no charge. See how coaching can make a difference for you.

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Copyright 2002-2008, by Sharon Teitelbaum, all rights reserved.
Sharon Teitelbaum, www.stcoach.com, Master Certified Coach

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