April 30, 2007 by jacquie.

There I was in my beautiful serape and sombrero, singing in Spanish. It was Show and Tell and was I showing and telling. What was this tan girl from Texas doing singing a song in Spanish on a wintery day in Ohio? My past memory included the class thinking this new girl was stuck up and unfriendly. I detected their dislike right in the middle of my song. Is it any wonder I spent the rest of the school year pretending I was sick? My mother must have been worried. I never told her how much they didn’t want me to speak a different language or wear those fancy clothes.

Imagine how I dragged that feeling with me through the next 54 years. I was always thinking: “Don’t be different, don’t stand out, don’t have something to share.” Ugh! Here I am, launching a new business and lugging along that sense of being disliked and being shunned because I dared to be proud of knowing Spanish in the fourth grade in Ohio! It’s been holding me back for years. Every time I stand to speak in front of an audience, I re-experience that shame which feels like a boulder in the pit of my stomach! As I have been preparing podcasts of my recorded voice, I’ve felt the fear and I’ve continued to prepare anyway. Wouldn’t it be great to let go of that awful feeling and step into the spotlight with a sense of appreciation?

Thoughts create feelings that determine our actions which create our results.
Have you noticed how often this has come up for me in the past few weeks? Three? Four? Five times? Those are the times you’ve read about it, but I’ve encountered it in action a lot more than just those times I wrote about it! Lucky me.

Coaching to the rescue!  Yesterday a coach from one of the groups I’ve joined called to give me a free session. Guess what we talked about! The fourth grade. This is about the millionth time I’ve talked about it, but she had a great suggestion – rewrite the story. What a great idea! As I write this, I’m following the coach’s suggestion. I’m rewriting the fourth grade story before I conduct my first teleseminar I’m leading for this new business, Promise Power™.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Fast Rewind ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here’s 10 year old, Jackie. (Back then, I spelled my name the conventional way.) I’m talking to my mom about what I could do for Show and Tell at school. “Do you think they’d like to learn that song I’m always singing in Spanish? I really love the way the words just roll around in my mouth. I bet they would too.” My mom had a great idea. “Let’s go find that serape and sombrero you wore in the school play last year – it’ll be perfect with that song.”

Funny, it snowed the day of Show and Tell. I couldn’t believe how cold it was in Ohio compared to Corpus Christi, Texas. I wrapped the serape around me while I waited for the bus. When I got to school, all the girls wanted to know about the blanket and really liked all the pretty colors. We all thought it was scratchy but very pretty anyway. The sombrero! It was really fancy with all the gold braid and stones. The girls kind of squabbled over who got to try it on. 

When it came time to sing, I felt a little nervous but I started out by telling them how all the kids in my old school had to learn Spanish because we lived so close to Mexico. It seemed hard at first but then we realized what a great thing it was because the kids could talk to each other and most of our parents didn’t know what we were talking about. It was like a secret language.  They all wanted to know a secret language.

When I said I would teach them the song, they got quiet. First, I sang it all the way through and then said, “Let’s sing the first part together.” Lucky us! Mrs. Price knew how to play the piano, so she sat right down and played along with us. By the end, the whole class could sing the song and everyone was excited. It was so popular that our homeroom performed it in the Christmas pageant – with me in front, wearing my serape and sombrero.

Now that’s a good story!

© 2007, Jacqueline Hale

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April 19, 2007 by jacquie.

I’m starting a teleseminar series this week. The information in Your Secret of Success is the same information I’ve used with my clients and other teleseminars I’ve taught in the past. I’m very familiar with it, so I was surprised that along with thoughts about the content for the upcoming class I also experienced a twinge of dread. Maybe “dread” is too strong a word. Maybe it was anxiety. It isn’t a good feeling, whatever I call it.

This is a feeling I recognize from all my work that has been in service to others. I had it whether I did massage or health consulting or coaching or training. Over the years, I began doubting myself because of this twingy feeling. When I would realize I had a client scheduled, I got a sinking feeling. When I had a client coming for health assessment, I felt a similar twinge. When the feeling  happened over and over, I thought, “Hmmm, I think this means I shouldn’t be doing this work if I so often dread doing it.” To be honest, that’s one of the reasons I stopped doing body work and health consulting. If I dreaded seeing clients there must be something wrong. All that thinking there must be something wrong made me believe that something was wrong and as a result, I became less effective.

Thoughts create feelings which determine actions which produce results.
Somehow, I’ve powered through with coaching, the feeling isn’t as strong and I’ve gotten better at centering myself. I learned to be in what I call coach mode, where I am completely involved in what my client is thinking, saying and feeling rather than in what I am experiencing.  Also, in almost all cases, at the end of the appointment, I have a very positive feeling that has allowed me to minimize the dread.

This morning, as I journalled about what I felt about the upcoming teleseminar, I came to an amazing realization. It isn’t dread I’m feeling, it’s the awesome responsibility I have to people who are my clients or students or audience. They put something of great value into my hands – themselves! And in many cases, they have paid me. Therefore it is totally appropriate for me to have feelings about what I am doing with them. I am called to respond to what they need, sometimes before they even know they need it!

Doesn’t it make perfect sense that the feeling was so much stronger when I was putting my hands on people or suggesting supplements to improve their health? In those cases, they were expecting me to take care of them. In my coaching work, I’m expecting them to take care of themselves. A good coach provides the tools for people to change their own lives. However, it’s still an awesome responsibility.

Once I recognized that my anxiety was totally appropriate, I immediately knew what to do about it. I took a deep breath, brought the feeling into my heart and made a commitment to do the best I can to guide my clients and participants to be whole, creative, and resourceful.  What a relief!

© 2007, Jacqueline Hale

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April 12, 2007 by jacquie.

Last week I got inflamed. I was angry about an injustice in my community and the fury was all consuming. A useful coaching question about nearly anything is: What did I learn? What did I learn from being inflamed about injustice?

The first thing I learned was to notice the signs of my anger. My right eyelid was twitching like crazy—a sure sign of stress for me. My neck was uncomfortably tight, my shoulders ached, and I had serious butterflies in my stomach. The symptoms involving the neck and jaw are physical signs of anger. The stomach/solar plexus reactions indicate fear. I actually felt like Vesuvius just about to spew. That’s not a pleasant feeling and far from healthy.

The next step was to articulate what was inflaming me. We had a family dinner in the midst of all the drama and as I was ranting about the situation to my daughter. My mother-in-law asked, “Just what are you so angry about?” What a great question! I took a few deep breaths and focused on the angry feeling, and soon I could clearly articulate what was inflaming me.

I’m mad at _____ because he/she is doing ____. This affects me in the following way ____.

Unfortunately, it took me a few more days to do anything about the volcano action! Eventually, I thought to ask myself: What can I do to change things? Just feeling angry wasn’t accomplishing anything but making me miserable.

I was reminded of this wonderful quote from Gandhi: Be the change you want to see in the world. In this case, the change I wanted to see was that people would cooperate with each other for the greater good of all. Taking that advice to heart, I realized that I needed to understand and cooperate with people rather than sitting around being furious and not taking action.

There’s another appropriate adage here: The only person I can change is me. Since I can’t change the person who inflamed me, my next step was to understand the dilemma from her point of view. What does she want, and why? Once I know that, I can respond rather than react. I can think about it, write about it, and talk to others about it, which widens the sphere of influence so that many people can brainstorm rather than gossip.

Can I change the course of action? Maybe I can’t, especially if the source of my discontent is outside of my sphere of influence, such as in Washington. In such cases, I feel like an ineffective scarecrow, flapping in the wind while the crows continue to eat the corn. But that’s another article for a different day.

 In this case, however, I can have some influence over the course of action. I can use my responsibility (the ability to respond) in a creative and collaborative process that honors everyone. Next, I asked:

What can I do?

Once this became a collaborative effort, I asked:

What can you do?

From that perspective we can come up with some plans which, through trial and error, can eventually support everyone involved. I feel physical and psychic relief already!

© 2007, Jacqueline Hale

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