Do you often find yourself wanting more connection and intimacy in your life, but struggling to create it amidst the complexities of modern life? Do you coach or counsel others on creating more intimacy? If so, you may find this article very useful. The quest for deep and meaningful connection is a very common human [...]

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An acquaintance from high school recently posted the following quote on Facebook: “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” I responded, “You know, I’ve been writing a bit on close relationships lately, but hadn’t stopped to consider the important & frequent role that strangers do play in our lives, especially considering that everyone [...]

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I was cycling along the quiet desert highways of southern Utah, beginning with Moab and then visiting five other towns, this week 15 years ago. A team of 25 cyclists pedaled to raise funds and awareness for Habitat for Humanity. Utah included one of the toughest segments of our entire cross-continental journey, 208 miles over [...]

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Serious and debilitating addictions, i.e., to a physical substance or gambling, should be treated in a therapy setting, not via phone-based coaching. Nonetheless, certain techniques from this field can be applied to a broad range of undesired behaviors. These techniques include recognizing the impacts of one’s environment, and proactively generating strategies for countering and replacing [...]

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Holly Harman Fackler, editor of the new “Community Conversations” section of the Mansfield News Journal, interviewed me recently. Because she covers a range of community and civic engagement issues, the topics of Naked Idealism fit in nicely. We covered a lot of ground including the book, life coaching, authenticity, sustainability, proactive thinking, diversity, self-leadership, and [...]

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I enjoy listening to how people use words. In fact, this is a cornerstone of life coaching, as the type of language we use illustrates much about how we think. How we think, in turn, determines much of our reality. If we consistently fear that the worst is going to happen to us, operating from [...]

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I recently posted an article on an ABC 20/20 episode that compared the happiness levels of various countries and attempted to explain why these differences might exist. Among the conclusions was that more materialistic wealth doesn’t necessarily lead to more happiness. This got me thinking about how our current economic recession may–or may not–impact happiness [...]

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Overall, the greatest focus of coaching by far is upon the present and future. However, one of the most powerful exercises I went through during both my own coaching and coach training, in a few different forms, was an assessment of the enjoyable activities in which I’ve engaged since a very early age. This was [...]

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The term “naked idealism” has been used to refer to thinking that is too “pie in the sky,” without sufficient grounding in reality. In my opinion, most of us don’t do enough such thinking, and often allow ourselves to be limited by current reality before we even begin to envision the life and world we [...]

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