Hitting the Bulls-eye! (in 2013 and beyond. . . )

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Bonnie Bell

As I was reviewing some of my blog posts from 2012, I came across this one and realized it would be apropos to publish it again, because the same themes apply to several of my male and female clients who found their way to their bulls-eye jobs this year. You can pretty much change the names and particular job skills, and the same general themes will apply. Use your imagination to replace the name and description of the particular person to fit you or someone you know. There’s a good chance that many of the highlighted themes will apply. . .

Just last week, one of my clients, Pamela – a writer/editor in her mid-twenties, hit the bulls-eye – the very job toward which she had been aiming for the last three years, without realizing it. What she was experiencing was a lot of career pain, the symptoms of which included the dreads (dreading going to work every day); the drabs (boredom, verging on depression); and the dregs (obsessive-compulsive negative thinking and talking about the job).

If you have any or all of these symptoms relating to your job or career, take two Advil (my personal favorite) and call your career coach! It might be time for the Big Dig! A coach just might be able to help you dig yourself out of the hole you are in and into the light and air that awaits you just above ground. As long as you’re down there struggling, you can’t see anything else.

You may not believe me now, but it doesn’t take all that much time to get a handle on what lies beyond the limited world you can see from that dark place. For Pamela, it took about six coaching sessions over a period of two months to move from “I am stuck forever in this job because the economy is so bad and I’ll never get another job in my field”, to “I know who I am, I know what I want, and I am determined to keep looking until I find it.”

This transformed, powerful (as opposed to weak) attitude is predicated on finally knowing what you want and what you are looking for – the bulls-eye. You can’t find the needle in the haystack unless you know what it looks like. It requires that you sit with the not-knowing for a while until you develop a solid list of criteria for your next step. This list often emerges right out of the pain you are in. The pain is a sign of what you want but don’t have. The pain often points to its opposite, which actually points you in the direction of what you want next.

Example 1: You have no autonomy. This points to the fact that you want more autonomy. Check. Example 2: You have no say in how things are run. This points to the fact that you want more authority. Check. Example 3: You don’t respect your boss or your company. This points to the fact that you want to work for a company and boss you can respect. Check.

I just took a moment to look at Pamela’s list of criteria for the next step and counted 15. Here are a few examples of the general and the specific types of things that show up on a typical, well-thought-through list: 1) the position includes leadership, written and verbal communication, and some form of teaching or presenting; 2) the organization is either a non-profit with a cause that I resonate with, or a company with a mission and purpose I can respect; 3) there is the possibility of flexible scheduling and working from home. There were 12 more criteria on her list.

Usually people have a pretty clear sense of their criteria for the next step when they stop to think about it. Examples of these are: appropriate job title, size of company or organization (smallish, mid-sized, global, etc.), general vicinity and commute time, salary requirement, et al. These criteria constitute the general target for your fabulous cover letter and resume. Don’t apply for jobs you don’t want, only for jobs you want and that meet your general target requirements. If your resume is actually a fit for the job description, and you know you are a good candidate, it is likely you will be called for an interview. If you don’t get that call, move on. It’s not the bulls-eye, or you would have gotten the chance for an interview. The point of the cover letter and resume is to get the interview, so you can get your body there and assess the situation. You will have criteria you are looking for, just as the interviewer(s) will have. If there is a match, you will know it. If there isn’t, move on. Don’t take everything so personally! Each opportunity will give you a clearer sense of what you really want. Our mutual intent is for you to hit the bulls-eye, just as Pamela did. Her new job – the one she is thrilled about – has all 15 of her criteria, plus many great things she didn’t even think to mention. The bulls-eye job is usually better than you imagined it would be.

And lest you think it was just Pamela who hit the bulls-eye last week because she is 25 (and you are 50), another client, Daniel, a 48-year-old marketing creative on the East Coast, hit his bulls-eye as well. He’ll be assuming a VP role in a company that is expanding internationally – yes, one of his most important criteria.

One of the things Pamela said when she got the job offer was that she felt almost guilty because she knows people who have been job-hunting for two years. My response was,

Do they know who they are?
Do they know what they want?
Do they have their criteria written down?
Do they have a great resume that clearly matches the job descriptions to which they respond?, and

Do they have a career coach to help the process along?

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Making a Good Life Happen – The Philosophy

Posted on March 19, 2013 by Bonnie Bell

If you know anything about philosophy in general, you know it has something to do with the pursuit of wisdom – “an overall vision of or attitude toward life and the purpose of life.” You may or may not know that at the heart of every philosophy is the age-old question, “What is a good life?” Philosophers and regular, everyday people like you and me, philosophize all the time, whether we are aware of it or not. While “philosophy” itself, as a subject, is often thought of as a purely intellectual pursuit reserved for professors and their students at universities, there is a way in which we are all philosophers in pursuit of a good life. Political wrangling aside, we come together and split apart over common and/or different philosophies of life. The problem for all of us is that no one can really define for anyone else what a good life is; we have to work that out for ourselves. And then we have to be engaged in the process of actually making it happen in our lives, not just talking about it.

Making a Good Life Happen® is our proprietary business philosophy at Bell Investment Advisors. As we often say in our ads, “It’s not just about your money; it’s about your life.” On the most basic level, we believe that everyone wants a good life, but that the problem lies with the fact that most people simply cross their fingers and hope they will have one. There are no guarantees, of course, and hope is not a strategy. As you evolve and mature, you will realize that your “real” job in life is to become a grown-up, one who is a good, responsible manager of your life. This is the most challenging job you will ever have. You don’t and can’t know everything about everything. You will have to get help at times from friends, family, teachers, philosophers, and professionals.

That’s where Bell Investment Advisors comes in. Through investment management, financial planning, and career/life coaching, we intend to help people gain clarity about who they are, what they want, and develop a strategy and a plan to make it happen.

Our business philosophy pervades just about everything we do. Consequently, there is Making a Good Life Happen – The Philosophy; Making a Good Life Happen – The Blog, which concerns managing career/life issues effectively; Making a Good Life Happen – The Package, which is a special offer that bundles career/life coaching services with financial planning to give you a sense of where you stand in relation to your money and how you may want to develop your career for optimal satisfaction; Making a Good Life Happen – The Webinar, which addresses our philosophy and how it relates to your money, career and life; and later this year, Making a Good Life Happen – The Book, which will contain my writing on career/life issues and Jim’s writing on investment management, financial planning and other life issues.

Next month, on Wednesday, April 17, from noon to 1:30, we will hold our quarterly Making a Good Life Happen – Lunch in our Oakland office at 1111 Broadway, Suite 1630. These lunches have become popular for their relevant philosophical and practical content as well as good networking opportunities for businesses and other professionals. There is no charge, but reservations are required, as we reach capacity at approximately 20 guests.
This is an opportunity to meet Jim and me in person; meet some of our staff of 16; learn more about our firm’s philosophy; and see how it relates to and can impact your life, whether you ever become a client or not. Click here to read more and register.

On Wednesday, April 24, 2 p.m. Jim and I will also present our half-hour Making a Good Life Happen – Webinar on the same themes for the same purpose. Please join us for the lunch gathering or the webinar or both. Click here to read more and register.

Having your career, your money, and your life all add up to something great will not happen just because you hope it will; you have to make it happen! Can we be of help?

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It’s Not About “Who You Know” — It’s About Who Knows You!

Posted on March 13, 2013 by Bonnie Bell

I heard this twist on a familiar phrase at a meeting recently. The person who repeated it didn’t know where she’d heard it, so I have no idea where it came from either. If you happen to know the source, please let me know. Meanwhile, I plan to assign it my own definition, which came to me almost immediately. Let me just start by saying I am so tired of hearing the same old assertion that getting a job is all about “who you know.”

Believe me, I’m not discounting the fact that each of you has a personal goldmine of contacts. If you are unemployed or employed but wanting to make a change in employment, you want to think carefully about your most valuable contacts. They could be a heartbeat away from the perfect opportunity, but the thing is, do they really know you? Do they know enough about you and what you are looking for that they would even recognize the perfect opportunity for you if it were to show up right in front of them tomorrow morning?

Job seekers are so eager to “network, network, network” that they too often dash right past
Step 1, Know Thyself (as much as possible), which is about making sure they know who they are; what they want; what their most important gifts, talents, skills, and abilities are; what their most valuable offer in the marketplace is; and making sure they have an authentic, clear story to tell contacts and prospective employers as to why they are a strong candidate for the job. (Step 1, the hardest part, sometimes takes several weeks with a career coach, just to put some perspective on the process. . .)

Step 2, The Resume, reflects the results of the work in Step 1. This step is about developing a professional resume that actually tells the story of where you’ve been, but more importantly, tells the story of where you are headed. I want my clients to love and be proud of their resumes so they will actually “own” them and be ready to bring them to life in an interview. But I’m getting ahead of myself and the process.

Step 3 is all about The Criteria. You don’t want to start searching or networking until you get clear about your criteria for the next step. The more thought you give to this, the better off you will be. How are you going to find the needle in the haystack if you don’t know what it looks like? Most job seekers come from a confused, fearful, weakened place. This is entirely understandable. It’s even biological. But in this state they incorrectly assume they will heighten their chances of finding something – anything – by applying for as many different jobs as possible, much higher or much lower than their experience would suggest. This is a great way to exhaust yourself and undermine your power, but it is not an effective strategy. Getting clear about your specific criteria, including role (and possibly, but not necessarily) title, salary, location, commute type and time, type and size of organization, industry or possible industries, et al., will help you find opportunities that are likely to be in your target area, not to mention the actual bull’s eye.

Step 4 is all about The Search. And part of The Search – one element – includes taking an inventory of your personal goldmine of contacts. These are not all the people you know. They are people you know who know you. They are people who have worked with you, for example. They know your gifts, talents, skills, and abilities. They “get” you. They have worked with you or for you.

You need to be current with these people. You can’t assume anything. You can email or call them, but you want to catch them up on what you’ve been doing and what exactly it is that you are looking for now. You want to make sure they know who you are now, what it is you have been doing, and a handful of your criteria so they will know how to think about you; otherwise, you might be sent on a lot of wild goose chases.

The Search includes making good, wise use of your contacts; the internet, of course; LinkedIn; networking; exploring websites of companies or organizations in which you are interested; and approaching companies or organizations that may want to know about you; but only AFTER you have become clear about who you are; what you want; what your gifts, talents, skills, and abilities are; what your most valuable offer in the marketplace is; and after you are able to tell your story effectively.

It isn’t just about “who you know”, it’s about who knows you!

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The Women’s Roundtable at Bell Investment Advisors

Posted on March 6, 2013 by Bonnie Bell

In case you didn’t know – say, you just started following my blog because of your interest and/or concern about career/life issues – you might not know what the rest of Bell Investment Advisors is all about. We are a privately-owned registered investment advisory firm in our 22nd year of business, conducting investment management, financial planning, and career and life coaching, all of which we consider important dimensions of a larger conversation, which is about living a good life. After all, that is the point of it all, isn’t it? That’s why we say, “It’s not just about your money; it’s about your life.”

A good life doesn’t happen all by itself, just because you want it to or hope it will. Hope is not a strategy. At some point, you have to get clear about what you think a good life is for you, develop a plan for how you are going to get where you want to go, and then you need to take effective action. You may find you need or want some help along the way. That’s where we might step in to assist you. All of our offers stand alone, or they can be packaged, depending on your interests and needs. Many of our services are free. Our blogs and website library offer valuable content that can educate and serve you. I cover career and life issues in my blog, but we also have a finance blog, which covers important current financial issues, many of which are or will become relevant to you at some point. This finance blog, Momentum, can, like mine, be found by going to our home page at www.bellinvest.com. In the upper right corner, click on the brownish red blog icon for Momentum and the yellow icon for Career/Life. Almost every week there is a new post on Momentum about an important financial matter.

Today I want to let all of you – my readers – know that in the last week of January 2013, Bell Investment Advisors announced something new: The Women’s Roundtable, a learning cooperative for and by women, led in-house by one of our senior investment advisors, Marivic Hammond, who wrote the following in her first Momentum post:

“Our aim is to provide an enriching environment in which to learn and share ideas that impact our financial goals. When we evaluate our overall financial location, do we view it from every angle? Are investments positioned for long-term planning or short-term goals? How can you engage family members in discussions around wealth planning? Can you make your money multitask? Our goal is to keep things practical – we want to provide thoughtful commentary and be a resource for timely financial news and content. We will deliver this through a year-long series of education seminars on various themes and topics, with diverse perspectives from our expert partners and women facing similar challenges and everyday concerns. This is our roundtable. Let’s talk.”

I hope you will regularly sample Momentum, our weekly finance blog, and if you are especially interested in The Women’s Roundtable, check the fourth blog post each month. It will contain up-to-date information on webinars, seminars, and other events of special interest and relevance to women.

Let’s all get busy making a good life happen!

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The Value of Career/Life Coaching

Posted on January 24, 2013 by Bonnie Bell

Where would the San Francisco Giants be without their expert coaching staff? Most likely, they would not have won their second World Series in three years. And how about those Forty-Niners?? And Lance Armstrong. On second thought, let’s not go there. . .

No one seems to question the notion that athletes – whether Little Leaguers or major leaguers – need coaches in order to develop their skills and become successful. But when it comes to the highly complex matters of career and life, most people underestimate the value of coaching, not from personal experience so much as blind assumption. Too many people tend to think that they should, can, or “have to” figure it all out for themselves. This really doesn’t make sense when you stop to think about it.

If you did not read my last blog post, please scroll down and read it now: Building Positive Momentum in Your Career and Life. A good life won’t happen just because you cross your fingers and hope it will. Hope is not a strategy. With a momentum-based strategy – essentially keeping what works and avoiding what doesn’t – you also need a philosophy to guide you through the tough times. Making a Good Life Happen, the name of this blog, is a pro-active philosophy that suggests that you are going to grow up, decide what a good life is for you, and then spend your waking hours actively managing it. That’s your full time job, and as you know, it’s not easy.

Part of the Making a Good Life Happen philosophy is to ask for help when you get stuck. Why? So you can move on, like so many of my clients did last year. One client started her own technology consulting business; another quit two different jobs in order to get to the right one; another finally screwed up the courage to leave the job she hated and find one she loves, making several thousand more dollars than the one she was afraid to leave.

As a career/life coach, I focus on helping clients create positive momentum that will carry them forward to a better future. If you haven’t met me in person yet, watch this video, and request an appointment for a free consultation to talk about your life situation. Start thinking about your answers to the momentum questions: What’s working? What’s not? What’s missing? What’s next? You have the answers to your own riddles.

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Building Positive Momentum in Your Career and Life

Posted on December 21, 2012 by Bonnie Bell

As soon as December 26 arrives with a thunk, the world shifts its focus to the New Year. By December 31, of course, all eyes are on the clock to hone in on the final countdown to the minutes and the last ten seconds – one by one – before pandemonium sets in celebrating the arrival of the new year. Year in, year out, this is ritual, even if you are, in fact, home alone on the couch.

But what does this, or any other entrenched ritual mean, for that matter? A church liturgy, a bar mitzvah, a graduation: what do they really mean, if anything? Any ritual, if performed with a knee jerk, can be utterly meaningless; it can be meaning-FULL, too, depending on the consciousness, intention, and value you or I bring to it.

For me, December – when the outer world is at is darkest and coldest – is the perfect time of year to “reflect and capture” meaning. It seems to happen automatically, right in the midst of things, whether I am Christmas shopping or going to parties or attending concerts or wrapping gifts or sitting in front of the fire, there I am reflecting on the year, on the continuum of my life, the swift passage of time, the stages of life, all of which has me thinking about the big stuff: Life, Death, Meaning, Purpose.

At some point, usually very close to January 1, I actually sit down and apply the four momentum-based questions that underlie Bell Investment Advisors’ approach to investment management, financial planning, and career and life coaching. They are very simple and pragmatic in contrast to the vast, looming, largely unanswerable questions that life keeps asking within us. They are:

1. What’s working?
2. What’s not working?
3. What’s missing? and,
4. What’s next?

These are the kinds of questions that, when applied to your experience in the year just passing, tend to yield clear, meaningful answers upon which to build positive momentum in the next. The concept, in general, is that you can wise-up if you build on what’s already working, get rid of what’s not working, add what is missing, and develop a plan of action that incorporates your up-to-date “research.”

When the clock strikes midnight this year, on a much deeper level than ever, you can acknowledge what worked in 2012, say good-bye to whatever didn’t, welcome whatever good things you are adding to your life, and move forward into the new year with commitment and determination to make these things happen. That is something to genuinely, consciously celebrate!

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Good News for English Majors

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Bonnie Bell

In his recent Wall Street Journal article, How to Avoid a Bonfire of the Humanities (10/25/12), journalist and English teacher Michael S. Malone references the historic and broadening rift between the sciences and the humanities. In a world now thoroughly dominated by science and technology, the number of college students majoring in English, for instance, is ever- shrinking, while the number of students majoring in science and engineering is ever-booming.

As a career coach in the early 90’s, I well-remember working with large numbers of former English teachers and graphic designers, who were blind-sided by the technology boom in California and the forecast at the same time that California had more than enough teachers. What were they to do?

It turns out there were many things they could do. Because they tended to be smart, literate, and well-educated, they moved (not without the fear and angst that goes with any transition) into fields that required abstract thinking, creativity, good oral and written communication skills. Fields, off the top of my head, included marketing communications, advertising, public relations, technical writing, corporate training, not to mention enhancing their professions and eventually business ownership. But wait. Then what happened? Many of the younger generations went straight into technology in great numbers all over the world, and while this has provided fabulous opportunities for millions of them, some of the best and brightest skipped college, liberal arts, and the humanities altogether. As a result, could there be a different, less intense tidal wave about to hit the marketplace? As an English/writing teacher, Malone has observed the shrinking faculty in his department, where he is a part-time adjunct, as well as the shrinking number of English majors. Upon inviting a Silicon Valley mogul-friend of his, Santosh Jayaram, to speak to his professional writing students, he warned him not to discourage his students too much from pursuing their writing/teaching dreams.

Let me insert here that the reason this article came to my attention at all is that Santosh Jayaram is also a friend of my husband’s (who, by the way, happens to be a former English major, now the owner of Bell Investment Advisors). Santosh is, according to Malone, “the quintessential Silicon Valley high-tech entrepreneur: savvy, empirical, ferociously competitive, and a veteran of Google, Twitter, and a new start-up, Dabble.” What he didn’t say, and what I happen to know from my personal encounters with Santosh, is that he is also highly articulate, extremely funny, full of energy, and a man of wide-ranging talents and interests. I can easily imagine him lighting up a room full of English writing students with his Indian/British accent.

But I digress. . .

After Malone had issued his warning to Santosh not to discourage his students, Santosh replied, “Are you kidding? English majors are exactly the people I am looking for!”

Santosh went on to explain to Malone and eventually to the writing students that the tech world has been turned upside down in the last 20 years. It is no longer about coming up with an idea for a new physical product, then building the prototype, and eventually moving into the production phase of the product. Now most products are virtual (think smart phone apps) rather than actual. The programming for just about every new app can be contracted out almost anywhere in the world and completed in a couple of weeks. That’s not the problem.

The real work, Santosh points out, is in the intensive research—about a year of it—to discover the particular niche product idea that hasn’t been captured yet, and you must also use that time to find angel or venture investment, establish strategic partners, convince talented people to take the risk and join your firm, explain your product to code writers and designers, and most of all begin to market to prospective major customers. And you have to do all of that without an actual product. . . The battleground in business has shifted from engineering, which everybody can do, to storytelling, for which many fewer people have real talent.

This is where the English major might just be the rare and right person for the job.

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An Open Letter to the Editor of the New Yorker

Posted on October 18, 2012 by Bonnie Bell

I had to Google “Patricia Marx” to find out that she was a humorist; a colleague of Roz Chast, my long-time favorite New Yorker cartoonist with whom she wrote a book; a professor of writing at Princeton; and a former writer for SNL (Saturday Night Live), my long-time favorite TV show. I have been an SNL fan for about 25 years longer than the 25 years I have been a career/life/retirement coach. I was shocked to discover the humor in Patricia Marx’s background, since I found no trace of it (or heart, for that matter) in her derisive, perfunctory article, “Golden Years: How will boomers handle retirement? Hire an expert,” in the October 8, 2012 issue of the New Yorker under the heading, “Up Life’s Ladder.” Essentially, it was a pretty scathing four pages about spoiled, idiotic boomers hiring empty-headed retirement coaches because they don’t know what to do with themselves for the rest of their lives.

So while Patricia Marx has been a staff writer for the New Yorker since 1989, why she was the designated writer for this particular subject is not at all clear to me. Believe me, I can take a joke, and I’m quite aware that people fairly routinely deride coaching and coaches (except athletic coaches, of course, who remain at the top of the heap of admired professionals year after year). But on this particular subject, she could not have possibly done her homework, or without much effort she would have bumped into a few million people who would have something relevant to add to her shallow (she admits to being shallow, which is why, she says, she is a humorist) assumptions and amateur “findings.”

My direct comment to her is this: career, life, and retirement coaches exist because life is hard, transitions are painful, and smart people seek help when they need it, so they can move on and lead meaningful, purposeful lives no matter their stage of life, rather than twiddling their thumbs while their gifts, talents, experience, knowledge, and intelligence waste away. It is perfectly understandable to most people why athletes seek and benefit from coaching–what athlete would get anywhere without a coach? So, when it comes to “real life” changes and challenges, why should we just bite the bullet and go it alone? Start asking people how they got where they got, and you will find many who got where they got because of or with the help of a coach or two or three.

Ask some of our retired clients right here in the East San Francisco Bay Area: the 72-year-old former salesman who now spends his time creating and selling gorgeous pottery and granting the wishes of dying kids through the Make a Wish Foundation; the 72-year-old professional storyteller, actress, and playwright who is finally doing what she wished she could do when she was supporting her family as a public relations professional; the retired jury clerk who joined the Peace Corps for two years and now works internationally with an organization that monitors democratic elections in emerging nations.  These boomers don’t seem spoiled in the least, and they are still changing the world as they go – including into the retirement years.

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September

Posted on September 11, 2012 by Bonnie Bell

September has always and will always bring with it a whole string of back-to-school feelings, even though I haven’t been back to school since earning two post-graduate degrees a number of years ago. I love reading and learning and will forever do both, but that’s not quite the same as embarking on an actual school term, no matter what age you are.

When fall suddenly arrives–the day after Labor Day–I am hit with the distinct smell of autumn, which I hadn’t noticed the day before; the memory of an ominous stack of heavy, hard-backed books being hoisted onto my back; newly minted pens, pencils, and paper at the ready; multi-colored leaves crackling beneath my new pair of shoes; opening a strange classroom door, with a mixture of excitement and dread in my gut; and once, at long last, opening that door and finding the love of my life.

In September, it seems as if the entire culture shares in the back-to-school/back-to-work mood. My phone rings with more frequency, and each new client seems ready to tackle something they’ve been meaning to tackle for a long time. There is sort of a “fun’s over, let’s get to work” kind of mood. A similar thing happens when the next term begins–in January–but that’s even more intense, loaded, as it is, with New Year’s resolutions and all.

Right now, in this very September, I am excited about getting to know my newest coaching clients. Each one, as I tell them, triggers the feeling in me that I am about to open a new book. I love reading books, and I can’t wait to read the one they represent! They are the hero or heroine of their life story, and I am rooting for them; I will use everything in me to help them get where they want to go! I can’t wait to get into the work we will do together.

Inevitably, I have more faith in them than they have in themselves, because one of my primary gifts is that I can “see” things–like potential! I can’t help it. Plus, I have been doing career and life coaching for almost 25 years–while they were doing whatever they did for the past 25 years. I have tremendous confidence in the work because I have seen the work “work” so many times. My office wall is full of thank you cards and emails from former clients who got where they wanted to go, and from some who got somewhere they didn’t even know they wanted to go.

My newest thank you email came from a client with whom I am still working. She has moved through a very painful transition from a job she loved deeply at one time, but one that, years later, turned into a bit of a nightmare. It was extremely painful, and she had to grieve the loss before she could move on. Now that she has, and is much clearer about who she is, what she wants, and has developed criteria for the next step, she has several possibilities in front of her. I am confident she will hit her bull’s eye–the clear goal she will share with all of my past and future clients–because that’s the point of our work together. In an email in which we were arranging our next appointment, she said this, which I share with her permission:

There is no concrete news on the job front, but this has been a good time for me to have flexibility in scheduling, with all three of my family members starting a new semester. For many years, we have all four been caught up in the busy-ness of the beginning of school, each in our own separate way, and I appreciate having the capacity to focus on supporting my family–preparing their meals, shopping for their supplies, listening to the stories about new teachers, classmates, and in the case of my husband, new students. It is almost palpable for me to see the difference it makes to them. . . For sure, your support has had a tremendous impact on my life, and I hope you can see and feel that. Perhaps it is difficult for you to see it, when I keep falling apart during our meetings! But for me, having that opportunity to fall apart has been rare and valuable. And it makes me realize how little slack I usually allow myself in my work and in my relationships. It’s something to work on, but it’s an old habit and will take some time and effort to change. . .

Sometimes people come with their eyes focused on one thing, and they find out something else they didn’t even know they wanted or needed.

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Life Lessons from the Olympics

Posted on August 14, 2012 by Bonnie Bell

I don’t know when I’ve spent this much time in front of a television set so fully engaged. I watched as much of the Olympics as I could every day and night, and when I couldn’t – like every day at work – I caught up with the day’s major events on the internet and on the news.

I’m the type who really gets into the inspirational stories of the athletes, of course. The tougher the story, the more emotional attachment I feel for them. If you could see into my family room – and I hope you can’t – you might see me jumping up and down with the thrill of triumph, or tearing up from the agony of defeat. I keep the Kleenex at hand.

I am anything but an athlete. I never had any leanings in that direction at all, although as a kid I loved to swim and was always the last one out of the pool. I was thrilled when I earned my junior life-saving badge at Girl Scout Camp and experienced my first and last standing ovation. I learned to dive from a diving board in good form: feet together, toes pointed, barely a splash . . . I loved tumbling (of all things) and bouncing to the rafters on a trampoline, but I was always too chicken to do the summersaults and backwards flips. I was more into having fun with my friends than practicing any sport for hours on end. But then, I grew up at a time when girls didn’t take sports seriously, and neither did teachers, coaches, boys, or fans. What a global turnaround is apparent at the 2012 Olympiad, in which female athletes actually outnumber male athletes for the first time.

But what draws me most to the Olympics each time is that on a deep level, it is a metaphor for all the metaphors for life we already have: the hero’s journey, the universal human journey, the archetypal quest for the Holy Grail/hidden treasure/golden egg. The Olympic Spirit is the human spirit in all its glory, magnified a thousand-fold upon a global stage. This year it happens to be in the land of the original Shakespearian stage, no less.

In interview after interview with the medal winners, I kept hearing the familiar themes of universal success: vision, commitment, determination, relentless hard work, continually overcoming challenges, painful injuries, recoveries, never giving up, et al. But in an interview with Michael Phelps after he won the all-time Olympic medal record of 22, Bob Costas asked him how difficult it was for him to overcome his early defeat in these games. His answer was so unique, it still has me thinking.

Phelps said that throughout his years of training with Bob Bowman, his one and only coach for sixteen years, Bowman would periodically throw a completely unexpected disappointment at him. It might be something as personal as causing him to delay a trip he did not want to delay or to miss a dinner with friends – something he knew would be an emotional disappointment. (To my coaching clients: Don’t worry, you know I would never do this to you in a million years. I’m the one who would be there to help you through the unexpected disappointments . . . ) Even though this was difficult to deal with every time, it taught him to expect the unexpected, to be ready to quickly shift gears and deal with it, and to move on to the next moment or challenge as a completely new and separate event.

Now that’s an Olympic feat and life lesson if I ever heard one!

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