Videos Archives - Page 7 of 22 - Rhoads Life Coaching, LLC

August 23, 2020August 20, 2020

Our Service to Others – Rhoads Life Coaching, LLC

We hold up as heroes those who make it their career or calling to serve others. Part of our own development is to find our own way to find purpose and meaning the service to others.

Who are the everyday heroes you hold in high regard? Our military service members? Our law enforcement officers? The medical community? Teachers? Those stocking the shelves at the store?

We have been doing a lot of that lately. Lifting those up who stand at the front line of our communities and serve us unselfishly. Putting the needs of others first is a trait we value, all the way down to our philosophy and religions.

What if these heroes weren’t just meant to be public servants, but also role models to emulate? How are you developing the service part of yourself? What would it look like to put the needs of those around you above your own? As it turns out, the meaning and purpose we find in the world comes from that connection of helping each other.

What prevents you from developing your service to others? It could be as simple as feeling patriotic in wearing a mask in public. Not for your own safety, but the safety of those around you. Maybe you could be just like our heroes. What do you have to lose? – www.rhoadscoaching.com

finding meaning and purpose in daily life

August 16, 2020August 11, 2020

Back To School – Rhoads Life Coaching, LLC

Each of our different communities are headed back to school in the next few weeks. In whatever form that may take, it is going to be a big transition. Anxiety is increasing as we get closer to this change.

A friend who is a school administrator related his experience of heading back to school last week after being away since March. Even without the students there yet, he found himself exhausted heading home that afternoon. The thought occurred to me that we will ALL be exhausted at the end of each day as schools try and find their rhythm. Having not been in this cadence since March, and given all of the new challenges, it is taking a lot of effort just to get to where we stand today.

I have a few requests.

Pay attention. Pay attention to your own fatigue and the tiredness of those around you. We are all going to be worn out.

Be patient. Even if you don’t have school-aged children, we are all going to be impacted by the next few weeks.

Be grateful. There aren’t any clear decisions about what is the best way to educate during a pandemic. Try and show some gratitude to the teachers, administrators, staff, and students who are doing their best to move forward.

Thank you to those who have the courage to keep moving during all of this uncertainty. Thank you to those who care, serve, and teach our children at all levels. I wish you the best of luck in the coming weeks. May you have a successful school year. – www.rhoadscoaching.thinkific.com

finding meaning and purpose in daily life

August 9, 2020August 6, 2020

Take A Walk (It Will Help A Lot!) – Rhoads Life Coaching

Want a simple way to develop physical, emotional, and spiritual health? Take a walk! It doesn’t matter how fast or far!

Clearly there has been a lot going on in our lives lately. There has been a lot change and there is a lot to keep track of. Anxiety keeps creeping in. There have been lots of opportunities to get outside and to exercise. Are you including walking in that?

Taking a walk is different that jogging or riding the bike. There is us time to reflect. It is easier to see the world going by. It gives us a chance to slow down a bit.

There are significant benefits to making a habit of walking! Even just a few minutes of walking each day reduces joint pain and stress. It is the simplest, least expensive way to improve our physical and emotional health.

What will it take to make a habit of going for a daily walk? I dare you to not take your phone or music! – w ww.rhoadscoaching.com

finding meaning and purpose in daily life

August 2, 2020July 28, 2020

What’s Your Favorite Movie? – Rhoads Life Coaching

What’s your favorite movie? Better yet, WHY is it your favorite? The answer says a lot about who you are. It can be used as a mirror to learn more about yourself and to continue to develop who you are becoming.

I’ve written in the past about Owning Your Story and the idea of a Psychological Mirror. The question of your favorite movie combines these two ideas into an introspective look at how you see yourself. Have you taken the time to ask yourself WHY you enjoy your favorite movie so much?

Is it the hero/heroine you resonate with? Do the cast of characters relate to each other in a way that means something to you? Can you see your own story in the plot? Every movie has a conflict. Something happens and the characters must develop in order to overcome obstacles. We see ourselves in their struggles!

So how is this a useful tool for you? By paying attention to what we like and dislike in our favorite movies we understand more about ourselves. This understanding offers an opportunity to do something different in our own lives.

If I can see myself in the character on the screen, then a piece of the character also exists in me. What if you empowered that character inside you to lead you into your next adventure? How would you appear different in the world? – www.rhoadscoaching.thinkific.com

finding meaning and purpose in daily life

July 26, 2020July 21, 2020

Casuistry As A Decision Making Tool – Rhoads Life Coaching

I’m a little late to the game. I recently discovered Malcom Gladwell’s podcast, “Revisionist History“. In Season 4 he spends three episodes re-discovering the Jesuit decision making tool of casuistry.

As a methods of moral decision making, casuistry was misused in the 18th and 19th centuries by rationalizing and excusing any behavior. That is not my intent (nor was it Gladwell’s) in bringing it forward today. It was originally developed as a way of seeing the individual and their problems in a novel dilemma.

Casuistry asks for a pause and a drilling down into the details of a problem. It is intended for use in circumstances that haven’t been experienced before. First, stop and investigate the details before applying a broad principle to a decision. It asks for a “decent into the particulars”. Something we don’t do very often in our fast-paced lives.

Most importantly casuistry asks us to listen to the details “free of disordered detachments”; without preconceived biases. What would it take for you to listen in our current environment without bias? Maybe that is part of the problem!

Finally, casuistry looks for previous examples that compare to the current new scenario in order to assist with making a decision. The request is for the decision to take into account the combined information.

My request is to consider using casuistry as a tool. Where are you applying broad principles and skipping over the details? Where are you entering into a conversation with your biases front and center? Given some of the new challenges we face in our families, businesses, and communities right now, it might be worth a try. – www.rhoadscoaching.com

finding meaning and purpose in daily life

July 19, 2020July 16, 2020

Our Culture of Comparison – Rhoads Life Coaching

We swim in a culture of comparison. It is so much a part of who we are we don’t even know we are doing it. It is like the air we breath. In order to know where we are in terms of our identity and success, we automatically compare ourselves to those around us. It is how we calibrate.

This comparison is a trap. Either we compare ourselves to those who are less than us in order to feel better. Or we compare ourselves to our idealized version of whatever it is we are trying to measure. Note that I didn’t say, compare ourselves to those better than us. Comparison can be healthy in terms of competition, but rarely do we ever compare ourselves to someone at our own level where it is possible to complete. We compare ourselves to the imagined best. And we end up being “never enough”.

So where do you compare yourself to others? It might be easier to list where you don’t compare. Is it the better job? Or size of house? The marriage/relationship? Their hair? Where they went to school? The team they root for?

The trap in our comparison culture is that it spirals out of control into judgement. ANYTHING you can do to reduce comparison to others is an automatic decrease in stress, envy, jealousy, and conflict. Where is the easiest place for your to start? – www.rhoadscoaching.thinkific.com

finding meaning and purpose in daily life

July 12, 2020July 7, 2020

Conceptualization As a Tool – Rhoads Life Coaching

Do you think of conceptualization as a tool or skill? For that matter what IS conceptualization? We use it all the time, whether we know it or not. It is the ability to see what we want and how to go about getting it. It can apply to any aspect of your life.

We teach young athletes to visualize the skill they are trying to master as if it was happening. See the ball go in the basket. Watch yourself catch the ball. It helps the athlete to visualize what they have to do and the sensation of completing the task. It can be empowering and a powerful focusing tool.

Just like any other skill, it can be developed, There are different levels of conceptualization. It works at a very simple level, like completing a phone conversation; or at a very complex level of developing plans for a building or a business.

Why isn’t this skill transferred to our professional and personal lives? What would happen if were to see conceptualization as a tool at your disposal when you need it? How would your confidence, preparation, and follow-through change? Where are you not using as a skill?

Try being more intentional with your conceptualization of visualizing not only the how of completing a task or doing a difficult thing. Where is the best place to start practicing? – www.rhoadscoaching.com

finding meaning and purpose in daily life

June 28, 2020June 24, 2020

Ten Pounds of Stuff in a Five Pound Bag – Rhoads Life Coaching

Ever find yourself believing you can get more done by packing more into each day? At some point the scale tips and the productivity and fulfillment drop off. It’s kind of like trying to put 10 pounds of stuff in an 5-pound bag.

This is a funny image for me. It conjures Lucille Ball stuffing chocolates in her mouth as they come down the conveyor belt, or the frantic, fruitless task of trying to stuff a sleeping bag in a nylon bag. There is some humor in it, until we look at the fact that for some of us we live our daily lives this way. Each day becomes a futile effort to do more than is humanly possible. Maybe the humor helps to take some of the edge off.

Don’t get me wrong. I whole-heartedly believe we should be productive. But where did we tip the scales from being productive to being so busy that we lose the meaning and fulfillment of what we are trying to accomplish? Hopefully one of the silver linings of our recent stay at home lockdowns will be to see that we were pushing the limits on what we tried to complete each day.

Where does this appear for you? Your to-do list? The number of events scheduled in a day? Trying to fit one more chore in before heading out the door or going to bed each night? We each have our own version of this. The clue it is there when the pace is not longer sustainable. What is your version of this game?

The antidote? Slow down! Take some time to determine what is valuable and an important to you so you are better able to prioritize what you choose to do with your time. Practice saying NO to a few things. Finally, take a step back and look at the humor created with trying to cram the ten pounds of scheduled things you want to do into a five pound bag for each day. – www.rhoadscoaching.com

finding meaning and purpose in daily life

June 21, 2020June 21, 2020

The Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) – Rhoads Life Coaching

Our Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) creates a variety of consequences. Where are you spreading yourself too thin from the anxiety that you won’t be as fulfilled as those around you?

Three times this week FOMO came up in coaching conversations. It seems we have a lot of anxiety that we will miss something! In our social media world and in a culture that moves to pack more events into a calendar than is humanly possible, we fear we will miss something and not measure up.

My bet is that ALL of us have some level of this anxiety. Where does it show up for you? Not being able to say no to a request? Scheduling event after event until there is too much to do? Comparing yourself to the highlight reel of social media posts? Trying to keep up with the Joneses?

In our fear we worry we will not be enough. We won’t measure up. There will be something wrong with us if we miss an event. Or that every event might be a life changing experience. All of these fears end up being about how we perceive ourselves and the stories we tell about who we believe we are. Ironically, the fear of missing out is about our relationship to ourselves, not the events we might miss.

The antidote to FOMO? SLOW DOWN! Take a few deep breaths. Take a break from social media. Create white space in your week to not have a meeting or event (what a radical idea!). Most of all, don’t compare yourself to others. The person you are comparing yourself to is just as insecure about missing out as you. It is the insecurity that keeps this hamster wheel spinning. By being comfortable with who you are as an individual, you are able to choose what you do and where you go. By being more than enough for yourself, there is no need to fear missing out. – www.rhoadscoaching.com

finding meaning and purpose in daily life

June 14, 2020June 10, 2020

We All Have To Go Together – Rhoads Life Coaching

I wrote last week trying to describe the consequences of ignoring our social contract. Implicit in this contract is that if the ‘haves’ get too far ahead of the ‘have-nots’ our contract will collapse. In order to achieve the things we want as a community, culture and society, we all have to go together.

Have you ever thought about that? Our culture is wired to try and ‘get ahead’. We believe the path to success is ‘win’ against the competition. The eat or be eaten mindset doesn’t account for the fact that a social contract still exists regardless of how we approach life. Suddenly the gap created by getting too far ahead creates a problem. To say it a different way, leaving the ‘have nots’ too far behind breaks our unspoken agreement of how to treat each other as humans.

We have watched this play out across the country over the last few weeks. The separation has become unsustainable. Unless those of us who stand in a place of prosperity and privilege pause to help those struggling behind us, we will not be able to continue forward. Because of this social contract, the ‘haves’ are bound to the ‘have-nots’ and must help if we want to keep going.

How does this play out for you? Are you aware of the contract? Are you aware of your place in it? If you are like me, you come from the privileged side of the equation. What are we being called to do to help? We all have to go together. In order to do that, we must be willing to help those less fortunate than ourselves. What is your role in the solution? – www.rhoadscoaching.com

finding meaning and purpose in daily life

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