The Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One Review

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The Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One Review"Renaissance Souls love nothing better than to take on a new problem or situation and then dig into...until we master the challenge we've set for ourselves. And then, with fresh enthusiasm, we move on to another passion. We are lucky people who, if left to our own devices, are never bored for long." - Margaret Lobenstine
Do you resist confining yourself to just one hobby or career? Are bookstore and libraries candy stores to you? Do friends suggest that you become a contestant on game shows because you know "something about everything"? Are you capable of becoming passionately excited about a wide variety of subjects? Do you find yourself interrupting yourself, dropping one task to pick up another before it's done?
If any of these descriptions sound like you, then you're probably a Renaissance Soul. Unlike the Mozarts of the world who always knew what they wanted to do in life or enjoyed sticking to one discipline, Renaissance Souls are the Ben Franklins of the world. That is, we have many concurrent interests and the idea of settling on "just one" (or even two) makes us nervous and nauseous.
Most of the world operates on the idea that "settling on a career" or "getting focused" by steadily climbing the corporate ladder over decades is the "right"-and secure-way to live. However, for a Renaissance Soul to attempt to squeeze in such a confining mindset is almost like a living death.
Despite a long, proud history of inventiveness and cultural influence among the ranks of Renaissance Souls, parents, teachers, and the social climate at large insist that we are somehow defective. This often leaves us feeling discouraged, frustrated, and confused. Why are we like this? Why can't we be "normal", and limit our passions, hobbies, and career endeavors to "just one"?
Fortunately for us, author and life-coach Margaret Lobenstine has written a book especially for Renaissance Souls, offering encouragement, validation, and practical tools for living a fulfilling, joyful life. The Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One is an incredible resource that explains the difference between choice and focus, shows how to thrive on many interests without feeling scattered, and equips individuals with powerful life-design strategies.
Lobenstine also illustrates how Renaissance Souls can transform a day job so that it carries dreams forward, learn a new field without going back to school, and get paid for your passions. However, even if money isn't your goal and you just want to be able to explore, engage, and enjoy your multitude of interests, the author provides wonderful exercises for getting the most out of your pursuits.
The section called The Ice-Cream Sampler alone is worth the price of the book! Lobenstine-also a Renaissance Soul-can sympathize with the dilemma that "choosing has often meant losing". However, she helps her fellow Renaissance Souls learn an invaluable tool called Focal Point Strategy. By using the analogy of sampling dozens of ice cream flavors "four flavors at a time", the author demonstrates the mechanics and benefits of focusing your interests. Focusing, she asserts, brings more, not less, to a world of possibilities-offering variety with clarity and concentration. She writes:
"I can't emphasize enough what a powerful difference it makes in a Renaissance Soul's life to feel free to focus on three or four or five things for now, and let others wait until later. We simply can't juggle dozens of interests at once. And yet, there is a kind of abundance that flows from establishing a tighter focus."
As one who has had many interests throughout life-some of which I've explored in depth for years-I'm all too familiar with having *so* many interests, that paralysis sets in when trying to decide what to do next. I've been a minister, a teacher, a counselor, an interior decorator, a credit solicitor, a webmaster, and free-lance writer. I'm a stay at home Mom who home schools, am a professional Tarot reader, and pursue many intellectual and spiritual interests on the side. I was surprised and comforted to learn that there are many people out there like me and we have a name: Renaissance Souls.
Another invaluable tool from the book is the "Five from Fifty" exercise where you decide your five main values right now. According to Lobenstine:
"People who aren't fully committed to the values that their activities represent sputter through life, pulled in one direction by their commitments and in another by their spirits."
Not only does she show Renaissance Souls how to choose their five most important values, but she also demonstrates how to run activities through the filter of "Whose values are these? Mine or someone else's?"
One of my personal study projects, lasting years, has been personality systems. One of these systems-the Enneagram-demonizes Type 7's for not focusing, claiming that we have a multitude of interests because we're trying to run from or hide extreme emotional pain. Hogwash! I bought that silly lie for several years and finally realized it just isn't true. A Type 7's salvation isn't being like a Type 5, hunkering down and choosing "just one" focus to exhaust ad infinitum until we transform ourselves into a boring, single-minded geek.
I came across The Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One quite by accident while in large chain bookstore. In fact, I was on my way out of the bathroom-heading towards the coffee counter before leaving-when I saw this book on a display. After I read the dust jacket, I KNEW this was a book written for people just like me...and bought it immediately.
While the entire book is a gold mine for Renaissance Souls, the Focal Point Strategy has been invaluable for me. I now realize that I can pursue all my interests-just not all at once. This strategy has freed up amazing amounts of time and energy, helping me to get the most out of what I've chosen to do and curing me of "analysis paralysis". If you're a Renaissance Soul or a Type 7 in the Enneagram, this book is an incredible resource for staying on track, sucking the marrow out of life (and your interests), using your unique personality to your advantage, and celebrating the spirit of the Renaissance Soul.
-- Janet Boyer, author of The Back in Time TarotThe Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One Overview

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The Double-Goal Coach: Positive Coaching Tools for Honoring the Game and Developing Winners in Sports and Life (Harperresource Book) Review

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The Double-Goal Coach: Positive Coaching Tools for Honoring the Game and Developing Winners in Sports and Life (Harperresource Book) ReviewDiscussions of character in sports hinge on two sometimes competing beliefs. One holds that sports build character, the other that sports reveal it.
The case can be made that both ideas are valid. Character is regularly revealed in the way that players, coaches, parents and leaders of youth sports organizations (YSOs) conduct themselves on and off the field.
The "Sports Builds Character" belief is a trickier proposition. Who is to question that sports provides a wonderful setting for the development of poise, confidence, determination, resilience, self-sacrifice, courage? The list goes on, and it is not a coincidence that a strong involvement in sports was the common feature of those who tried to take back the plane on 9/11. Yet every Positive Life Skill associated with sports has a counterpart that can be learned equally well. And often more easily. If you can learn fair play and sportsmanship, you can also learn to cheat. If you can learn about commitment, you can also learn to quit on yourself and your teammates. Accountability and accepting responsibility: making excuses. Again, the list goes on.
Many of the adults involved in sports simply assume, based on their own experience, that the positive side of these character traits will emerge. In fact, without a concerted effort to use sports to teach positive Life Lessons, you might as well be flipping a coin.
Attention to these issues is a major focus of "The Double Goal Coach", the latest book by Jim Thompson. The author is founder of the Positive Coaching Alliance ..., an organization based at Stanford University which seeks "to transform the culture of youth sports so that sports can transform youth."
Like many books on the state of youth sports, Thompson chronicles the excesses. What sets the book apart are solutions to these problems based on research in the fields of education and sports psychology as well as lessons in organizational culture drawn from the business world. Theory then becomes practice through the presentation of many practical tools for establishing and maintaining a positive culture for youth sports. Coaches, parents and the leaders of YSO's will find things here that can be put to immediate use.
What is a Double Goal Coach? He or she is a coach who wants to win. Thompson makes clear that the Positive Coaching message is not anti-competitive or about "happy talk". This is not an invitation to go out and kick a ball around with Barney. Indeed, at a time when real competitions at Field Day have been reduced to (at most) a 50 yard dash, Thompson sees the competitive sports experience as an increasingly important, and rare, opportunity for the development of positive character traits - the second, and more important, goal of the Double Goal Coach. Because it's the character traits that will endure long after the ball's gone into the closet.
There are three elements to Double Goal Coaching. The first seeks to redefine winning, changing the definition from one based only on results (the "win at all costs" model, or waac - which so often becomes wacko!) to a "mastery approach" based on effort, learning, and a positive view of the value of mistakes. The essential difference in the approaches has to do with control. Results are so much in the control of others; with a mastery approach, control belongs to the athlete. What's interesting, though, is the research that shows that a mastery approach actually produces better performance than one where the focus is primarily on the scoreboard.
Next comes the concept of Honoring the Game. This is largely a proactive view of sportsmanship issues, based on what you do rather than what you don't do. Honoring the game involves developing and demonstrating respect for Rules, Opponents, Officials, Teammates, and one's Self (ROOTS).
The third element of the Double Goal model involves "Filling the Emotional Tank", motivation through encouragement and positive reinforcement. Again, the book provides a number of useful tools for coaches.
There is also a section of the book for Sports Parents. Thompson promotes the notion of the "Second Goal Parent", whose primary task is to be unconditionally supportive of their child, whose focus is on those Life Lessons and positive character traits, who recognize that their child's participation in sports belongs to the child, and who leave coaching to the coaches.
Thompson advocates a "systems approach" to developing positive cultures for youth sports, and his organization provides an integrated set of workshops for coaches, parents and leaders of YSOs. Where that's not in place, "The Double Goal Coach" will give the individual coach many ways create a more enjoyable environment for his or her team, and one where the players are much more likely to reach their potential as athletes. That a Double Goal approach will also be much more enjoyable and rewarding for the coach is no insignificant bonus.The Double-Goal Coach: Positive Coaching Tools for Honoring the Game and Developing Winners in Sports and Life (Harperresource Book) Overview

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The Mentor's Guide: Facilitating Effective Learning Relationships Review

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The Mentor's Guide: Facilitating Effective Learning Relationships ReviewI thought I knew what mentoring meant, but it wasn't until I read this new book by Lois Zachary that I realized that I didn't begin to fathom the depth of the learning journey as it relates to the mentoring process. This author spells it out every step of the way. For those in the business sector; for those in the business of volunteering; for just about anyone who cares about nurturing others, she covers all aspects of the field. There are strategies, exercises, examples -- anything you will need to get you in the right frame to be a mentor and to "facilitate effective learning relationships." I am very impressed.The Mentor's Guide: Facilitating Effective Learning Relationships Overview

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Coaching for Performance (People Skills for Professionals) Review

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Coaching for Performance (People Skills for Professionals) ReviewThis book, now in its third edition, is the grandfather of coaching books and approaches. Much of what has come to be known as professional business coaching came from Timothy Gallway and Whitmore's sports training techniques. As such, the book provides a simple foundation for coaching based on the context of awareness and responsibility through asking questions and listening. He presents the G R O W model of coaching - Goal, Reality, Option, Will - as a format for coaching sessions.
The book begins with a few foundational beliefs of coaches. Unlike old models of management that work from the "carrot and stick" approach, a coach believes in the potential of the client. Whitmore believes that people are only able to change only that which they are aware. Responsibility must stay with the client if they are to perform. Questions raise awareness and yet maintain the client's responsibility. If the coach tells the coachee something, awareness may increase slightly, but responsibility in now in the hands of the coach, the source of the information. Questions cause the client to pay attention to their actions, think at higher levels, and provide feedback for the coach to work from.
The G R O W model provides a sequence of questioning and for the coaching session. A coach starts with the client's goal. Either an end goal, like "retire at age 45," or a performance goal, such as "write a new training manual by December." After further clarifying the goal the coach can move on to the current reality of the situation. Asking such questions as: What have you done on the manual up to now? What are the needs that you think a manual might help? What has kept you from finishing the manual these past two years? Options are then generated from the client as to how they can achieve their goal. Finally, What will you do? Whitmore builds several checks and balances into this last step to ensure performance.
The final section of the book is new territory in this 3rd edition. Coaching used to be about performance - doing, acheivement. In the past few years coaching has moved to underlaying motivations of personal fulfillment: the "why" underneath the desire to achieve performance goals. Whitmore includes new chapters on coaching for purpose, getting to life's meaning.

Of the dozen books on coaching that I own, this one has consistently been the book I refer back to as I try to explain to someone what is coaching: Believe in the potential of people; raise awareness and maintain responsibility through questions and listening; and follow the GROW model. All are the essence of good coaching.Coaching for Performance (People Skills for Professionals) Overview

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The Skilled Facilitator: A Comprehensive Resource for Consultants, Facilitators, Managers, Trainers, and Coaches Review

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The Skilled Facilitator: A Comprehensive Resource for Consultants, Facilitators, Managers, Trainers, and Coaches ReviewI picked up this book because I needed to read up on how better to sell facilitation and exactly what facilitators should be doing. This book explains this and more. However, if you are looking for a simple overview of what a facilitator should, could and would do incertain situations, this is NOT your book. If you are a manager trying to be a better facilitator, do not buy this book unless you want in-depth information.
That said, if you are a facilitator looking to improve your skills, combine theory and practice or simply go back to the basics of what makes some facilitators great, this is your book.
Also, if you are a manager who really wants to become an effective facilitator/mentor, this is your book. But don't think that you can simply read the material and be more effective. The ideas and theory will take practice. Luckily, the book also gives many examples to make the ideas and theories practical and concrete.
As I said, I bought it to become better at selling professional facilitation. It gave me that and much more. I will keep it as an invaluable resource and make sure all of my facilitators utilize the practices described in detail.The Skilled Facilitator: A Comprehensive Resource for Consultants, Facilitators, Managers, Trainers, and Coaches Overview

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The Trusted Advisor Review

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The Trusted Advisor ReviewAccording to the authors, "The theme of this book is that the key to professional success is not just technical mastery of one's discipline (which is, of course, essential), but also the quality to work with clients in such a way as to earn their trust and gain their confidence." The authors provide "a new understanding of the importance and potential of trust relationships with clients, and show how trust can be employed to achieve a wide range of rewards. We examine trust as a process, which has beginnings and endings, which can be derailed and encouraged, and which take place across time and experience. We analyze the key components of trust and the process which trust involves in a relationship." To give you at least some idea of what this book addresses, here are the questions answered in Part One ("Perspectives on Trust"):
What would be the benefits if your clients trusted you more?
What do great trusted advisors all seem to do?
What are the dynamics of trusting and being trusted?
How do you ensure that your advice is listened to?
What are the principles of building strong relationships?
What attitudes must you have to be effective?
Do you really have to care for those you advise?
In the final chapter, the authors include "The Quick-Impact List to Gain Trust" and then an Appendix in which they duplicate all of the checklists previously provided. I rate this book so highly for twqo reasons: First, because the content is rock-solid, anchored in a wealth of real-world experiences which the authors generously share; also because they explain HOW to gain and then sustain the trust of everyone with whom you do business. This book will be especially valuable to small-to-midsize companies whose success or failure is primarily (if not entirely) dependent upon client relationships based on trust. Buyers have lots of choices. It is not enough for them to trust what you sell. Others may well offer the same product or service. They must also trust you, the seller. And here's the key point: It is imperative that customer trust your advice as they consider a purchase from you but, ultimately, your customers must have so much confidence in you that they will also seek your advice on other matters which have nothing to do with what you sell. So-called "customer satisfactioon" is achieved on a per-transaction basis. As Jeffrey Gitomer correctly asserts, your objective should be "customer loyalty." The authors of this book explain HOW to achieve it and then HOW to sustain it.The Trusted Advisor Overview

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