Evolving Cities

Rosebank Skyline Dec 2009

Over the past 6 months the changes in South Africa cannot go unnoticed. Suburbs are emerging and although the green space is diminishing at an alarming rate,  it is one of the costs of developing and evolving cities.

Some may say that these changes will not remain once the 2010 World Cup is over. I believe that not only will the changes remain but in addition, we may find that a notable percentage of fans and visitors will be returning to SA to make new homes here and offer their contribution to the expansion of this part of the world.

What if Resolutions Offered Guaranteed ROI?

If we were to treat our resolutions as a financial or business investment, the outcome would surely be much different!

By taking time to carefully set tangible objectives, where the expected outcome has been determined either by the desire to achieve a set goal or through the results of accomplishing several predetermined small tasks, each of us should be able to easily keep any resolutions made at the beginning of the year… not so! Many of us make resolutions, which are to affect the next 12 months without any thought at all?

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The Sprint 3 Day Transformational Adventure Camp

2010 is when I sprint ahead, kick-start the year and get right on track! What will you be doing?

Nurture Your Future is looking forward to our first Transformational Adventure Camp. In collaboration with outdoor-activity professionals, we will be providing a unique program, created to ensure that 2010 begins with a sprint.

Join us on our 3-day Transformational Adventure Camp from 06-08 January 2010 for 17-19 year olds.

Take advantage of this action-packed, adventure-filled workshop. Limited to those who really want to a make a huge difference to their lives in 2010 by moving into action towards achieving their grandest goals.

Burning Issues on Coaching 1

Two days ago, I attended an event hosted by Knowledge Resources, entitled Burning Issues on Coaching, where coaching experts Natalie Witthuhn, Director of Leadership Development Centre (LDC) at Wits Business School, and Sunny Stout Rostron, President of COMENSA and author of Business Coaching Wisdom and Practice, highlighted some of the principal issues around coaching in today’s society.

I thoroughly enjoyed both speakers and walked away with quite a few insights and some research to do. (And as usual came away with a couple more questions.)

First, I was surprised to discover that officially coaching as an industry is only approximately 10 years old and as a profession does not yet exist, which is why it is difficult to find any relevant information prior to that. Of course unofficially it has been around for centuries, with Socrates probably our first coach, but documentation and books on business, executive or any kind of specialized coaching have only recently become available for modern day coaching. It made me understand why when asked to choose a profession from drop-down boxes, coaching is only rarely listed.

Following Giant Footsteps

Is it possible to transform oneself in just 4days? Read on as I share my experience of seeing what takes place when one is in the presence of one of the most inspiring people I have met throughout my life time; Marc Steinberg, founder of the CCI Coaching Academy.

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What an awesome, awesome, awesome joyful privilege for me to walk, run and sometimes take the express train with you as we each travel on our journeys through conscious transformation. I am truly loving it and at times, though the challenges may seem almost insurmountable, the view is amazing when we get to the next destination.

Michael Jackson – His Legacy – Heal The World

Michael Jackson is someone that I always see as that little brother with all his big brothers and their Afro hair, outshining all of them singing…

“ABC, Easy as 123, so simple as do re mi, …” or “One bad apple don’t spoil the whole bunch girl…”*

Michael Jackson Aged 12 - Image Harry Diltz/Corbis

Tick Tock – Take Stock Tick Tock – The Present Past

What were the promises or resolutions that you made to yourself at the beginning of the year? Take fifteen to 30 seconds to list what they were?

Tick Tock – 3 months of this year has already gone by.

Are you in the process of making 2000 and 9 MINE or FINE or is it already just another year? What of your dreams and the positive changes you were going to make. Did you plant the seeds and remember to water the garden?

Tick Tock – The Not So Long Ago Past

Lets take you back 3 months before that, to October 2008. What were the things you promised you would do by the end of 2008 after you stopped work and before the new-year started?

Tick Tock – that was already 6 months ago. For those who did them, I am sure you  can see some of the shoots raising their heads out of the ground just now as the seeds begin to germinate. For those  of you who, didn’t well are you going to wait until the next season comes along? In SA it is now the beginning of Autumn, in the Northern Hemisphere, it is the beginning of Spring.. know that there’s always a right time to plant a seed… just don’t forget to water it 😉 )

Tick Tock – The Back In The Days When

My brothers in the UK have both been meaning to come and visit my children and I since I moved to SA. Each year they say, “I’ll come next year…when I have the time and the money.” I have been here since 2001 and last year they have promised to come next year… when they have the time and the money. My youngest was 6 the last time they saw him he is now 14.

Oooooh! and remember, back then in 2001 there was no facebook or myspace and little use of cell phones for family or social calls, so my children have a very vague memory of a couple of uncles on the other side of the world and my brothers still see my children with gap toothed smiles 😉

What are you doing today that you said you would be doing five years ago? More importantly, what are the things that you are not doing today that you said you would be doing today?

So, now you might be saying, well I promise I will do it at the end of the year?

What if the problem did not lie in the promise itself?

What if there was a tool that could be used that would ensure that you would achieve the goals that you have set for yourself by when you said you would achieve them?

What would your life look like then?

There are a few simple keys to achieving your goals, one of the very first ones is to always be in action towards your goal, even if the action takes 30 seconds. In 30 seconds, I look at my list of to do things and at a glance, I know what needs to be done next. Do I choose to do it… may be I will… may be I won’t, but those 30 seconds gave me time to create a few choices.

Given the choice, how do you choose to use your time presently, if you are ready to move in to action and are feeling stuck or press for time, call me or skype me or email me

Tick Tock… click on this link now to find out how to make the best use of your present and if you are still watching the clock go by, why not watch this space and see what presents the present may offer you over the next day or two?

Watch out for “Tick Tock – The Present Day In Action” and “Tick Tock – The Present Day Inaction” – the follow up to these current blogs

Joan Laine is a Transformational Coach and a Workshop Facilitator. To find out more about Joan visit her profile on Head Start PBS or on Linkedin

Time, Money & Change

Is that small change or BIIIIG change you are wanting in your life?
How many times have you sat thinking, ‘I have had enough! I can’t stand living like this anymore. I’m bored, fed up and something’s got to change?’

Or maybe you have sat there, wistfully thinking ‘Oh I wish I could be like him or her, look how lucky they are, they’ve got a lovely home, they travel all the time, their business is so successful and look they’ve even got a beautiful family. Life’s so unfair and some people have all the luck.’

So have you ever stopped to think, that maybe it isn’t luck? Today, I suspect many of you have and now you’re thinking “yeah right!  I have tried “The Secret” and the “Law of Attraction” and that stuff doesn’t work, some people are just eally much luckier than me.’

So you carry on sitting there, watching the world go by and the beautiful, successful people get more beautiful, more successful and richer every day (notice that for some reason successful people are rarely ugly – another possible reason for envy to raise its head hey?) and you keep wondering why it aint happening for you!

Let me ask you a couple of questions;

1. How much real time do you invest in creating the life that you want to lead?
2. How much money do you invest in putting into action the elements required for you to live the life you wish to lead?

Here are a couple more questions;

1. How much time do you spend complaining about the life you don’t have?
2. How much money do you spend doing things you don’t really enjoy?

Now, those questions are not rhetorical, I invite you to SPEND a little TIME, investing in yourself right now and make the above a little exercise. Take a good look at where you are spending your time and your money in regards to the above questions and make a list using each question as a subheading.
Once you have finished, what do you observe?

Do you still believe that luck alone is responsible for the success of the others?
What would you need to do in order to change the situation around? And what kind of change do you wish to make on your life, because you see, the bigger the changes you make, the bigger the return on investment on your time and money and therefore the bigger the successes.
Do you want a lot of small change tinkling in your pockets, or will you go for the

big changes, which will transform your life?

Transform yourself into one of those other successful, beautiful people by getting up and investing in yourself today, contact Joan Lainé for transformational coaching.

When Opportunity Knocks…. Open the Door!

This statement has been in my head since 13 February 2009 and it actually began as a question, almost like a joke, and there is a pause before the punch line.
What do you do when opportunity knocks?
…
Open the door!

The reason it came was because for the preceding months, I spent a lot of time doing everything I could in order to create a great start to 2009 and so I was still so busy creating, that I had not lifted my head up and therefore was not seeing all the possibilities and opportunities that were waiting at my door. Many of them were not at all in the form that I had expected or envisioned, therefore I did not recognize them at all and others were far to big to even fit through my front door, so they could not possibly be for me!

I have just spent the last 30 days sorting through the options and making decisions as to which opportunities I will pursue, which ones I will give away and which ones I will put on a shelf for a rainy day (my shelves now get cleared out at least once every six months, so nothing will be sitting for too long).

This morning I woke up again with the statement in my head, this time for me to share with you by using an example of how we let those opportunities go by.
One of my sons is incredibly ambitious and knows what he wants out of life… he wants to be humongously rich, to design and develop video games and to go and live in Japan. Since the age of 7, this is all that he has ever wanted to do. The reason he wants to be so rich by the way, is so that he can support for poor (little people) who are willing to work but who have never had the chance in life to even begin because no one offered them the opportunity.

He has read “The Secret” and knows about the law of attraction and so did affirmations for a while and… it didn’t work for him! So! Now, he has not left his bedroom for 3 months, because he is busy creating what he wants by composing music for the games, designing characters and backgrounds or writing the scripts.
Simultaneously, he is getting angrier and angrier at the world and the Universe, because there he is doing all the things he is supposed to be doing and now he does not even have money to pay his rent!

I said to him, well how is the Universe supposed to deliver what you want if you are so engrossed and busy with what you are creating, that you don’t hear it when it knocks at your door? Or you are too busy playing “les abonnees absents” (subscriber unavailable). Sometimes, you have to go fetch it at the post office through registered mail because it’s a special delivery and must reach the designated person only!

You also have to get out there and be a part of the community and society, because as so oftens happens in South Africa, we don’t even have mail boxes on our homes and the only way to find us is if the postman asks, do you know so and so who likes to play music and video games all day – you may not know so and so, but you do know someone who knows so and so who may know so and so! May be you were walking on the right path and because you the post man didn’t arrive you decided to go look for him somewhere else, meanwhile, he has delivered the parcel where you expected and now its in the “poste restante”.

I explained to my son, if you are stuck behind your door and do not get up to answer when opportunity knocks, how on Earth will you ever find your way to that job in Brightwater Commons, let alone Japan? The Universe is knocking on your door with a letter inviting you to get out the house, go and write or draw on the green at Brightwater everyday, speak to the people in the market stalls, get involved and share stories about who you are and what you want, in a few weeks, someone will deliver the perfect opportunity because the Universe would have found you again in order to deliver it to you.

My son left behind the horrid grey and dark clouds, which were almost suffocating him when he arrived, replacing it with much more than a ray of hope, since he had gained the understanding also as to how The Secret and law of attraction works. The opportunities were there; he just needed to open the door.

So, why not check to see how many opportunities are waiting behind your doors so that you can actively decide what you want to do with them?

Be curious, be generous, be open to receiving things. How would you know what opportunity is behind the door if you don’t open it, go outside or explore those things that you don’t know.

Share with others what happened when opportunity knocked and you opened the door. Looking forward to your comments.

Transform your life through professional coaching.