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Coaching / Coaching Individuals / LIfe and Career Coaching

LIfe and Career Coaching

Together we work on your answers to the seven key questions that you need to ask yourself: What do I want to do? Why do I want to do it? Where do I want to do it? Who do I want to do it with? What do I want to give? What do I want to get? How do I make all this happen?

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LIfe and Career Coaching

Welcome to the process of

Creating Your Future: Designing Your Life and Career

You are embarking on a journey. Here are some hints to help you prepare.

PREPARING FOR THE JOURNEY

As you create this lifetime journey, you continue to ask seven questions: What, Why, Who, When, Where, How, and Which. As you answer the questions you create your Serious Dream.

Fountain and Funnel

As you answer each question, you burst forth—like a fountain—with a whole range of possible answers. Then you focus—like a funnel—on the answers that are most important to you.

You probably prefer either fountain work or funnel work. To create your Serious Dream, you must do both. You must consider lots of possibilities and you must make lots of clear choices.

As you generate your fountain of possibilities, use your Learnings Journal to keep everything together. As you set priorities, funnel your choices onto one large sheet of paper. On that paper, create an image with nine sections, one each for:

Place Purpose Potentials
People Pay Process
Partners Politics Possibilities

Create an image that appeals to you, such as a tree or a ship or a house or an island. The image I have used is a Castle—with the priorities in nine towers—but you can put your answers into whatever image you choose.

Why a castle? Castles are an appropriate image for designing our lives because they represent two different things simultaneously. Castles are airy, fantastic, dreamlike visions. Castles are also solid, historic, real buildings. To design your life you need a dreamlike vision that you turn into rock-solid reality. You have to dream and you have to take the dream seriously.

Group and Solo

Some of the time you work with a group—especially when you are gathering ideas or want to get reactions to your decisions. At other times you work alone to develop your own ideas and make your own decisions.

Action and Reflection

You may be tempted to race through the questions. Remember to pause regularly for reflection. Go for a walk or look out the window. Think about your answers for a while. Then think about nothing for a while.

Does this process really work?

Yes. You can get almost anything you want as long as you are willing to give up almost anything else. Michelangelo and Donatello envisioned their sculptures within the marble and then removed the superfluous marble. Look into the marble of your life for the vision of your future. Keep that vision very clear in your mind as you gradually take away everything that does not belong to your vision.

We Recommend Walt

Shelagh Aitken

Alexander Technique Trainer
In the years that I've known Walt, one thing has always been true: he finds the kernel of success in every story, the silver lining in all the clouds that work, relationships, and life throw our way. He guides the participants in his courses in re-visioning their goals and re-valuing their skills with a light touch. Castle is a good name for Walt's organisation: the foundations of a castle are firmly planted on the ground, but the spires, like the dreams we all have of what we could be if we only dared, reach toward the stars.

George Levvy

Consultant to top management teams
I worked with Walt at a major turning point in my working life—one career left behind and another yet to be identified. Walt helped me clarify exactly what I wanted—to become chief executive of a national charity—and how I would get there, and then supported me as I got myself moving. Less than seven years later, I achieved my goal. Walt’s guidance and support at that pivotal time was crucial—as well as being stimulating and fun.

Walt Recommends

Always We Begin Again

This contemporary paraphrase of the sixth-century Rule of St Benedict was written by a busy professional who wanted, like most of us, to lead a more balanced life. One brilliant point is to always give something away when you get something new. So when I buy a new shirt, I give an old one to charity. This keeps me from expanding my possessions—although I have greater difficulty doing this with books!