Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Celebrating #1

The first class of this course was held on Wednesday, September 19, 2007. I have to say that I’m not in a “celebration” mood and frustrated that I was not open to celebrating with all the people in class. It has been bad week and stressful 3 months for me and I am having a hard time engaging in anything that would be cause for celebration.

One thing that was brought up as a tool for celebration is a “joy journal” – a structure to help people focus on the things in their life that they can celebrate.

One person shared that at one point when she was feeling really down and discouraged and wanting to give up she stopped and wrote down what she had done and tried to focus on the positive. I know that this is what I should do right now because I know that I am focused on what isn’t going according to plan rather than what has gone well or where things are better.

Another way of using celebrating in coaching is to have a celebration session. Taking one session, maybe after 12 weeks, to reflect on what the client has accomplished over the 12 weeks. Possibly type up the session notes in such a way that shows what they want to accomplish and how and where they accomplished it – and celebrate it.

This was actually a very powerful class for me today. I really came into the class in a ‘bad’ place and as I listened to others in class talk about different ways of celebrating and about having an attitude of celebration - how even failure can be reason for celebration. I don’t know that I will walk away today with renewed hope or continue to feel defeated but I can see that it is something for me to contemplate this week.

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