A day at a time…

Hmmm…just for today I choose to be clean.

Just for this moment I choose peace over chaos…

Just in this moment I choose to be totally present, to “feel” my body- to step out of my head and all the thoughts that make me crazy and suffering drama, fear, and suffering…

Just for this one moment I take a deep breath and feel my body relax and the tenseness leave as I release the air….

And now another moment…I am faced with again the choice to breath in the moment, and to engage in the moment…

And again, I choose to step out of the chatter of my mind and listen to my breath, and feel it move through my nostrils….

Moment by moment I make it through another day, day by day I make it through another week, week by week I make it through another month, and then a year and then two…. this is one part of recovery…. this is the begining of recovery to live without picking up…

Inpatient treatment for recovery

Yes it may be true that inpatient treatment can make a remarkable difference in your recovery!
Since starting my job in Janesville’s AlcoCare, Inc., I am beginning to see many benefits of going in-patient for your first 30-60 or 90 days of recovery. It offers you an opportunity to be in a safe environment and learn a lot about addiction.
I stopped using drugs and alcohol out patient seventeen years ago. I went to AA, and received so much support there. But in all honesty, I have no idea how I managed to stay clean. It was tough, really tough. I remember being terrified to drive from my house to a meeting, wondering every time if I would make it past the bars to the meeting. It was horrible. There were nights when I would barricade myself in my bedroom, scared that I would get up in the middle of the night, when there were no meetings, or no AA clubs open, and wind up in a bar or a drug house.
In the in-patient setting there is support all around you. If you are having difficulties there are counselors, and here there is a life coach who can come over and speak with you, spend time talking with you, until the urge settles down.
You have a chance to try out some of your recovery tools, and become familiar with them, and begin to make a habit out of recovery prior to being out there on your own.
Yes, in-patient may just be the easier softer way to begin your life in recovery! Ahh, its all good!

AlcoCare, Inc., taking a giant step forward in offering clients a full range of care!

Today has been an adventure, just getting home from learning that I have found a new home base in Janesville Wisconsin’s AlcoCare, Inc.! AlcoCare, Inc. offers primary and secondary residential treatment for individuals in Janesville, Wisconsin and surrounding cities. I want to recognize Guy Onwiler at AlcoCare, Inc. for his courage to step forward, moving outside of the box and explore creatively new methods and ways to support clients who often times have many challenges to reaching long term sobriety, or clean time.

I have been doing some work with them for a couple of months, getting to see how things run, meeting with some of the clients, and joining in on some of their didactic groups.

I stopped in today with the news to the residents and they were sooo sweet, they were cheering me on and that always feels great! The coach gets some cheering on is fabulous!

I am honored as a coach to be making some steps towards integrating coaching into the treatment setting and being able to offer coaching to people who are in recovery from drug and alcohol addictions.

The plans are under way to be working with the affected family members in the near future which I think is absolutely necessary and the time is coming when we begin to recognize the family members and their own personal struggles. Yeah!

Love you all,

Me

Top Ten Reasons You Need A Coach Executive Coaching, Life Coaching Online Coaching at 24hourcoaching.com

By: Michael Slade

Coaching is a very powerful process available to any individual who wants to accomplish more, faster and feels stuck where they currently are.

Up until fairly recently only C-level executives and Olympic athletes utilized coaching. Unfortunately, even though most fortune 500 companies have been hiring coaches for their senior staff for years, and it is estimated that there are some 50,000 coaches worldwide, coaching is still not well understood. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that coaching is a private, confidential discussion between coach and client and little information is shared outside the coaching relationship. Some better known coaches have raised awareness about coaching, but it still remains a mystery to most. Marshall Goldsmith, best- selling author of “What got you here won’t get you there” is probably the best known executive coach, and Martha Beck, Oprah’s coach, shares some of her life coaching techniques in her new book, “Searching for Starlight.”

The below top ten list should enhance the readers understanding of some of the potential insights gained from coaching.

1. Coaching is a different kind of conversation – It’s not like a discussion you’d have with your boss, a trusted friend, or even a seasoned mentor. Probably the closest example is the conversation someone might have with a therapist. A coaching discussion is about you and the possibility and potential that might come from the coaching process. Coaches build trust early on, so a client is comfortable opening up and can honestly evaluate the necessary action to move them forward toward their desired goals. One powerful example of the type of connection a coach establishes early on with the client is the bench scene from the Oscar winning movie, “Good Will Hunting.”
2. People are lying to you – You have blind spots that you are unaware of – everyone does. A blind spot is defined as information that is known to others about you, but not known to yourself. Others can see our shortcomings that are not as obvious to ourselves. Marshall Goldsmith, who charges up to $200,000 per coaching engagement and only gets paid if the results are accomplished, sums this point up nicely when he says, “Almost everyone I meet is successful because of doing a lot right, and almost everyone I meet is successful in spite of some behavior that doesn’t make any sense.”
3. Success in life is all about relationships – Successful people understand that whether you work for someone or not, you’ll only be as successful as the relationships you build. This is not new to anyone, but I think many of us don’t give enough thought to identifying the key stakeholders that may help or hinder our success. If there are key relationships that are causing you frustration, even if it’s your boss, a coach can help you look at different ways to address this challenge.
4. Coaches help you see your real potential, clearly – If you’re like most people, you probably secretly believe you are capable of achieving much more that you currently are. Coaches help you examine your thinking to see where it’s flawed and where there is an opportunity to advance in the direction of your dreams. Sometimes all a coach needs to do is ask the right question – matter of fact, coaching really is all about asking questions that perpetuate learning and exploring what’s possible for the client. When Coach Herb Brooks wanted the 1980 United States hockey team to examine the possibility of beating the Russians, he mentioned over and over again, “Someone’s going to beat those guys.” Watching the locker room scene here, played by Kurt Russell in the movie, “Miracle.”
5. Life is just a story we tell ourselves – Life really is just a made up story we tell ourselves. People look at life through a lens that artificially distorts reality. In their excellent book titled “The Art of Possibility,” Ben and Roz Zander say it beautifully: “… Many of the circumstances that seem to block us in our daily lives may only appear to do so based on a framework of assumptions we carry with us. Draw a different frame around the same set of circumstances and new pathways come to view. Find the right framework and extraordinary accomplishment becomes everyday experience.”
6. You’re insane – At least according to the definition of insanity which we’ve all heard – doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Psychologists say that 90 percent of the thoughts you have today will be the same as yesterday. Life is about habits and coaches can help you examine what action you can take tomorrow that will produce very different results than today.
7. A slight shift in your perspective may make a huge difference – Wayne Dyer says, “Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.” Sometimes the way we approach a discussion, with our intention and opinions established beforehand, will dictate the potential outcome. Even in business the way you measure success can make a difference. Jack Welch changed GE’s famous vision of being number 1 or 2 in each of the business units once an outsider pointed out that defining success that way would limit growth. He later challenged his business unit leaders to never define their marketplace goals in such a way that GE’s business would ever be comprised of more than 10 percent of the total market. Watch as Robin Williams demonstrates shifting student’s perspective in this scene from “Dead Poets Society.”
8. You have limiting beliefs that are holding you back – Many people place a limit on what’s possible for them based on past experience and beliefs that were developed years ago during childhood. Most of the recent self-help financial books all point out this phenomenon. T. Harv Ecker calls this the ‘process of manifestation’ in the “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind.” The formula is as follows:
   P > T > F > A = R

   where P is your programming (experiences and limiting beliefs), which lead to your thoughts (T), which lead to your feelings (F), which lead to your actions (A), and your actions lead to your results (R).

9. You may be a crap magnet- The law of attraction, which has been talked about extensively for the last few years because of books like “The Secret,” by Rhonda Byrne, describe this belief. It basically says that like attracts like and you are capable of being, doing, and having anything you desire, if you focus your attention the right way on your desired outcome. However you refer to this, it is hard to ignore the overwhelming use of this process, especially in sports, where visioning the desired outcome has been used successfully with Olympic and professional athletes for decades. The opposite is also true, that if you focus on a negative outcome, many times you will get what you’re focused on. This is kind of like the self-fulfilling prophecy that people refer to.
10. Coaches provide insight – A coach can see things that you don’t. Here’s an example not from a coaching exchange, but between a Hollywood movie director and actor. Dustin Hoffman described an acting challenge he had while filming “Rain Man” to James Lipton on “Inside the Actors Studio.” Apparently, Dustin was having a very difficult time connecting to the autistic character he portrayed in the film and was not happy with his performance at all. He described how each time he and fellow actor Tom Cruise would go off script and ad lib, he found it difficult to stay in character. At one point feeling frustrated he just said a long drawn out “Yeah” in response to Tom’s exchange. Dustin did not even realize it until the director pulled him behind the camera and said “do that.” Dustin said it was like someone turned on a switch – “everything flowed once he found that one insight. If you’ve seen the movie, you know that he used that expression throughout the film and won an Oscar for his performance.

Michael Slade is a human resource executive and internal executive coach at a top 100 marketing communications agency. Slade’s wife, Lisa is the president of the online executive and life coaching service, 24hourcoach.com.

24hourcoach was created by a group of certified executive coaches to help people around the world realize the powerful benefits of coaching. It’s the only affordable online coaching service of its kind. 24hourcoach believes everyone, not just senior-level executives and Olympic athletes, can benefit from having a coach.

Top Ten Reasons You Need A Coach Executive Coaching, Life Coaching Online Coaching at 24hourcoaching.com.

Recognizes Your Greatness!

What do I mean by this?  How does it apply to you and bring value to you as the client?

In order for any of us to become we must first believe we have the ability to become that which we choose to become.  In order for me to see the greatness within you, I must first see it within myself!  I am otherwise blinded by my own limited beliefs, or fears.    Thus a coach has to be fearless in recognizing ones own greatness as an asset available to all- a part of the human being that was there from birth and is still there, waiting to shine, waiting to be discovered and realized by every single person alive!

A coach has to have a belief system that is big enough to encompass greatness within each individual, in order to recognize it in you!  A belief system that is large enough to see the deeper meaning within things, within life, in order for you to be challenged to step into your own greatness, and own it, relish it and grow within it!

A life coach much hold a larger vision than what is available to you in the moment, and thus hold it up for you from time to time in order for you to begin to believe it, and see it and recognize your true greatness! 

Find out how powerful a coach who recognizes your greatness can be to you in your recovery!

Cheryl Frei
Recovery Coach

Honesty

One of the subjects within life coaching session that will ultimately come up is honesty.  “Honesty” is a word so often spoken, yet the meaning falls on every person quite differently. 

I for example see and understand that honesty depends on where a person is and what is available to that person in the moment.  Thus honesty, as much as one may believe in its importance is not that all important to me from a client.  What is important to me, is that the client person be willing to look at what is available in the moment, and that a person have a desire to be open to what may become available to them. 

As a coach, honesty of the coach is vitally important to help a client achieved their goals.  It takes a great deal of courage to be honest with each client.  It also takes a lot of practice and some intensive inner work on the coaches part, to have the ability to enter into a session and stand in ones own truth and speak it honestly and fearlessly. 

A great coach, who values honesty, is willing to risk sharing with a client any discrepcies, conflicting statements, or conflicting actions, in order for the client to grow and move forward.    A great coach is willing to stand and ask the question without judgment and allow a client to process through however they need to process it.

Honesty, is a great asset for a recovery coach to utilize.

Cheryl Frei
Recovery Coach

Creative

Coaching is creative.  A life coach uses all sorts of information in the process of coaching a person.  Everything from a coaches life is utilized at some point in their coaching profession. 

Life experiences,  training,  teaching,  learning,  observation, as a coach I use everything that is available to me.  Every life coach comes with their own specialties, and unique life experiences, and unique training with skills that reflect these specific training modalities. 

As a recovery coach, I come with personal experience of my own addiction, and recovery.  I have been formally trained to coach through  Coachville’s graduate school of coaching, Fearless Living , Extreme Freedom,  Crossroads recovery coaching.  I have gone onto become a Minister, a Smart Recovery Facilitator, and went on to learn  Radical Forgiveness, and Non-violent communication.  My own life experiences as a business woman, a mother, a wife, and a grandmother hold great value as well and often come in creatively in my own coaching practice. 

Coaches are creative by nature, and find ways to assimalate and put to use everything from their lives to support a client in moving forward and reaching their dreams and goals in life!  Non of our experiences are off limits when it comes to helping a client reach their destination!

Find a coach who creatively moves you!

Cheryl Frei
Recovery Coach

Challenging

Being coached is challenging in many many ways.  I honor and highly respect those who have been through rigorous coaching because I know how tough coaching can be from my own personal coaching experiences as a client.   Having been through coaching myself, I believe I am a much more empathetic, and compassionate coach, yet a thoroughly challenging one as well.

I understand that in order to make substantial change on the outside, one has to experience inner personal change.  The ways one experiences these changes is by being presented with the challange of what they believe and live by. 

Coaching challenges a persons long held beliefs.  Coaching challenges a persons thinking, and thoughts.  If one is to move forward in life, to experience drastic change, one must be willing to change those beliefs that limit them in reaching what they desire. 

Coaching is challenging, and with each challenge comes more freedom from what was, to step into what can be!

Cheryl Frei
Recovery Coach

Honors confidentiality

Confidentiality in the world today may seem out of reach.  Yet as a recovery coach, I honor the ideal of confidentiality as a highly valued and sought after part of my practice.   I believe that as human beings, we have a need to feel safe, and need to feel we can trust in that safety in order to go speak from and express ourselves without fear of reprisal. 

This is something that is long lost in conventional counseling and therapy where they use to spout off about the confidentiality within their rooms.  Yet as time has moved on we see nothing was sacred that was spoken in those rooms.  Insurance companies know, the government knows, and everything in those rooms can be ordered into court at anytime. 

One of the greatest things about Life Coaching is that there are no records to be ordered into court, there is no license I hold that enforces me to keep any records of the conversation between me and my clients.  Confidentiality is real here in my coaching practice!

How does this help you?  The room is open and safe for you to speak your deepest fears, your greatest challenges, and it is within these rooms that the sound drops and is never written out, never placed in a file that anyone will later on access.  You are safe to work on what you really desire to work on, in the safety of knowing you can trust in the ideal of confidentiality!

Cheryl Frei
Recovery Coach

Holds you accountable

What does holding one accountable mean anyway?  Why is it important to a client,  to be held accountable?

It means you have a person here on your side, whom you make and commit to, when deciding to take an action or a step forward.  It is a great tool when you are wanting to make a change in your life that otherwise, you have been unable to make. 

Perhaps in the beginning you are eager to change, and this may not be something that seems necessary, yet as time moves along, your enthusiasm can and does wane.  This is where your coach can be a powerful advasary.  She or he is there waiting for you to answer to, and you know it.  So your will power may be declining, often times just knowing that your coach is waiting  for the results, this accountability factor is often the one thing that continues to move you past your waning will power and into your future success!

Accountability from a coach is a powerful asset that you can enlist and have working for you when you are contemplating change!

Cheryl Frei
Recovery Coach