Dear Reader,

I’d been thinking that maybe this week’s message would be about not getting stressed-out before the holidays, about not getting caught-up in the consumerism - that kind of thing.

And then I find myself this morning in a real ‘lunch is for wimps’ kind of mood.

So instead, here’s my wishes for you for the last weeks of 2007 and the beginning of 2008.

May you really crank it up for the rest of this year; turn your amps up to 11, put the peddle to the metal, shine as brightly and live as loudly as you want.

May you join me in believing that “work-life balance” ceases to be an issue as we learn how to be as full-on or as laid-back as we want to be in both.

May you achieve your end-of-year objectives with time to spare  - and make plenty of money (and see me if you still need help with either of those abilities) and then have a joyous time distributing it again.

May you start 2008 as you mean to go on; may you mark this time in silent contemplation and riotous celebration.

I am deeply grateful for all the people and events that have coloured my life and work this year.

If you would like to share your thoughts, as usual, please scroll down to leave comments.

This’ll be my last Monday Message for a couple of weeks; see you in 2008.

With best wishes,

Executive Life Coaching for smart, motivated people.

Dear Reader,

This week I’m starting my responses to the points raised when you took over the Monday Message in mid-November.

This one of Tim’s, about not having anything inspirational or thought-provoking to say, struck me as a good place to start, because it might be something of a theme, at work and in our lives as a whole.

New coaching clients will often say things like “I don’t know what fun is anymore”; ”I don’t know what’s important to me”; “I don’t know what I want”; or “I don’t know what I have to contribute that is worth anything“.

Sometimes what is needed is a re-calibration. Our internal measuring system seems to somehow get thrown-off or distorted, so that we can’t recognise the signals anymore.

So, for example, we sometimes forget what ‘fun’ is because we’ve no longer got our ‘fun-meter’ set to the right scale - we need to re-calibrate it, so that our internal measuring system can detect the signals. Once we’ve done that, it becomes easier again to find fun in the smallest of things as well as the special events -  rather than having to wait until something really big comes along.

Similarly, not knowing what we want from life or work or not recognising what we have to contribute can benefit from a re-calibration.
Have a go now if you want. Reach out and re-tune the dial, so that instead of looking for something huge and meaningful to say at the next team meeting or waiting for some ginormous quest for our lives and work, we can begin to hear the needle clicking over more often.

If we re-calibrate our measuring system, that ‘not knowing’ can be replaced by a much richer experience - and lots of useful data that will guide our future decisions.

If you’d like to, please share your thoughts on this by scrolling down to the “Leave a comment” box. Write what you want to write and then hit the “Press me now” button. Then check back here later on, to see what other peope have been saying.

With best regards,

Executive Life Coaching for smart, motivated people.

Dear Reader,

Do you ‘get’ all this online social networking stuff?