1. Health enough to make work a pleasure
2. Wealth enough to support your needs
3. Strength enough to battle with difficulties and overcome them
4. Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished
5. Charity enough to see some good in your neighbor
6. Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others
7. Faith enough to make real the things of God
8. Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future

~ Goethe

Every sports team has one, to instruct and manage the capabilities of the team members. Professional football and baseball teams often have a coach for each different aspect of the game, yet many people outside of these arenas are completely on their own.

The worlds of business and work, family and life are just as important to each of us as they are to professional athletes, yet once we are out of school or college we rarely get any coaching on our performance.

What can a coach do for you?

A coach or mentor is there to help you develop your skills.  In many areas of life (such as money, parenting, marriage, leadership, public speaking, even health and excercise) there are coaches available who can guide you to:

• Discover and develop your passions
• Find the “grand purpose” for your life
• Build a clear vision for the future
• Write your personal mission statement
• Learn how to relate to co-workers
• Learn how to manage people
• Learn how to navigate change
• Build your communication skills
• Appraise your performance
• Break out of a rut
• Learn to see situations from a new perspective
• Learn to think about problems in a different way
• Take action in areas that need improvement
• Free yourself of a destructive self-image
• Build better teams
• Improve communications in a marriage or relationship
• Become more confident in yourself
• Find meaning in your life and work
• Take more responsibility
• Take more (or less)! risks
• Grow in your faith

If you have had a growth experience with a coach or mentor, tell us about it in the Comments!

If you are a Coach or Mentor, let us know about what you do.

Paul J. Meyer, the founder of Success Motivation International, has compiled a list of barriers that we need to overcome in order to grow and succeed.

1. I’m comfortable - Staying in the comfort zone and living at the present level of success is easier and less stressful than exerting effort to make needed changes.
2. I’m afraid of failure - Fear of making a mistake or risking possible failure discourages trying anything new or different.
3. Disapproval hurts - The desire to avoid disapproval, either by themselves or by others, limits many to behavior that is calculated to please.
4. I don’t want to rock the boat - Anxiety about changing the status quo convinces some that change is negative and not worth the risk.
5. I don’t have what it takes - A poverty mentality, coupled with a false sense of inferiority, causes some people to believe they do not deserve the rewards of using their full potential.
6. Success might not be good for me - An illogical fear of success prevents many from breaking the success barrier. They feel unworthy or they fear they will not know how to handle success, so they subconciously avoid it.
7. God doesn’t want me to succeed - This unfounded belief of God sends many great dreams into a tailspin. Scripture says, “I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers” (3 John 1:2, NKJV).

This is the fourth installment of the “Living with Less” series, and today we will focus on our vision for the future. Perhaps you have already created a list of things you would like to accomplish, a Someday/Maybe list of heart-felt goals. A list of actions which, when accomplished, will mean that life has been worthwhile, that you were a success.

Take a moment to review this list. Are there any goals or aspirations there that will have a lasting impact on at least one other person? Or are they just for you? Did you have to do any work to come up with this list? Most people do not sit down with pen & paper to examine the results of their life so far and say, “Yep, that’s it. If I can take a 5-star international vacation my life will really have meant something.”

I would submit that it is worthwhile to examine your life and determine the real value of your past successes. And failures. (Did you learn something from them?) What have your past successes meant in terms of your influence with others and and their own vision of the future? The activities of our daily lives should include “teachable moments” for ourselves and for others to learn from. Sometimes we may not even realize that such a moment has just occurred! Making your own life smaller in order to create more time and energy for improving your relationships with your family, friends and neighbors in your community is a goal worthy of being called a success.

“Influence demands relationships and time. There is no other way. And both of these demand we clear all the unimportant items out of our way and make relationships and time together our priorities. They demand we take on the heart of a servant.”  Mark Tabb, Living with Less, p.34

Examine your own life. Analyze your goals. Discover your own true definition of success.