Welcome to Live Fully Coaching   Welcome to Live Fully Coaching's monthly newsletter. March is approaching! What is new in your life? How have you been progressing this winter?   Do you have someone or a group to hold you accountable to your goals and dreams? How have you rewarded yourself for each action step you've taken? Did you start a journal to write in every morning or night?   What will be new for you this spring? What is old and needs discarding?   Lots of questions, I know. But unless we take the time to stop to reflect on where we've been and where we are heading, we may stay remain stuck, or wander along with no clear direction. What do you want for your life this 2008 and for the future? Slow down this next month and take the time to reflect and re-assess.   This year, I am excited about being a part of Toastmasters and giving speeches. I am greatful to my voice teacher and singing every week. In addition I am thrilled to be close to finished writing a coaching book that will help move my clients forward in their goals and dreams. Coming soon! I love hearing your dreams and seeing them come true step by step. Passion. Passion for life. I believe we have this one life! What will you make it look like. You are the creator. Write it down, share it with a coach or a supportive buddy to make it that much more real. Let it come alive and put it into the world. What thoughts and old beliefs hold you back? How can you get help to get past them and create new beliefs. Yes, we do have control over our thoughts and our visions. It takes practice, but change is exciting and completely possible. what needs to change in your life today? When will you begin? Take it one step at a time. Write it down.   We will be working on these steps together in coaching, and a workshop coming April 3rd. I will be sending updates.  

    Making Ritual A Daily Part of Your Life   In her book, The Creative Habit, The Dancer Twyla Tharp says that a lot of habitually creative people have prepartation rituals linked to the setting in which they choose to start their day. By putting themselves into that environment, they begin their creative day. She wakes up at 5:30am daily, puts on her workout clothes, leg warmers, and sweatshirt. She walks outside her Manhattan home, hails a taxi, and tells the driver to take her to the Pumping Iron gym at 91st Street and First Ave. where she works out for two hours. By doing the same thing the same way each morning it habitualizes it, making the ritual repeatable, and easy to do. She writes, "It reduces the chance that I would skip it or do it differently. It is one more item in my arsenal of routines, and one less thing to think about."   It's vital to establish some rituals-automatic but decisive patterns of behavior--at the beginning of the creative process, when you are most at peril of turning back, giving up, or going the wrong way.    Twyla writes, the Oxford English Dictionary tells me a ritual is "a prescribed order of performing religious or other devotional service." All that applies to my morning ritual. Thinking of it as a ritual has a transforming effect on the activity."   We all have rituals in our day, whether we're aware of them or not. What are yours?   A writer friend can only write outside. He can't stand the thought of being chained indoors to his computer while a "great day" is unfolding outside. He lives in Southern California.   I know a chef who begins each day in the meticulously tended urban garden that dominates the tiny terrace of his Brooklyn home. Spending the first few minutes of the day among his plants is his ideal creative environment for thinking about new flavor combinations and dishes.   What are your rituals? What will set you in motion to begin your day in the right frame of mind. If you don't have one or it needs to change. What will it be? Write it down and start tomorrow.

 
Joanna Engelman is a Life Coach who works with performers, entrepreneurs, and professionals who want to make a change in their lives and take action. Coaching is action oriented and each week the client walks away with a plan for the week. The coach holds the client accountable to achieving his or her goals. Weekly hour long sessions build momentum forwarding the action. For more about coaching go to http://www.livefullycoaching.com. Free 20 minute phone sessions are available to find out how coaching can serve you i n your personal and career goals. Contact Joanna@Livefullycoaching.com or call Joanna at 212-946- 5465.