Quantum Endeavors, Inc.
February, 2010 e-Zine
 
Executive, Leader & Business
Success Coaching 
 
The Heart of the Matter!
 
 
Ann Farrell, CPCC, PCC
Ann Farrell, CPCC, PCC
Founder and President
Quantum Endeavors, Inc.
 
Corporate Success Coach
 
In This Issue
What's Love Got To Do With It?
The Most Important Love of All!
 
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Quotes
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
"Coaching can certainly help you strengthen your sense of self worth, focus on your goals - and get there, fast."
 
The London Daily Telegraph 
 
 
 
 

"Find what makes your heart sing and create your own music."

Mac Anderson 
 
  
 
 
"The objective, distanced view of a coach can also lead to new ways of looking at issues because the coach's ideas are not limited by politics or a position within the company."
 
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 Greetings!

I am very excited about my plans to spend tomorrow evening with the members of the Chicago American Marketing Association. 
 
Why?  Because they get it! 
 
Instead of inviting me to speak on any dozens of possibiliies about success, for their meeting the day after Valentine's Day they got right to the heart of the matter and asked me to speak about love!
 
 
Read on to learn what love's got to do with it...

What's love got to do with it?

The common denominator to success and happiness is love.  Finding what we love, doing what we love, consciously choosing every day to stay in love - with what we do, who we are with and most importantly, with who we are -  is the key to having success and happiness.
 
Putting love first, enables all else to follow.  It is true for career, relationships and even more so in our own personal growth and development.  Self-love, the most important love of all, enables us to have the level of self-knowing and self-awareness without judgement or self- berating required to fully step up and into our gifts.
 
We receive so many messages in life, all well intended, that point to who we should be or what we should do, that our first
challenge as we seek success and happiness is to get very clear about who we really are, what our gifts are and what we really love.  Often a great way to cut through all of the noise and external expectations is to answer "what would you do if money were no object?"  Another is "what would you do if you absolutely knew that you would not fail?" And a third is to explore the question "who were you born to be and what were you born to do?"
 
Even if we are doing what we love, staying in love with what we do must be a conscious choice.  Just as is staying in love with our significant other, our family and our friends is a conscious choice that we have to wake up and make every day.  To stay in love is not something that we decide once and is from then on self-sustaining.  We must keep choosing it over and over again.
 
It also requires us to keep the love totally without conditions.  
Sometimes we receive very conflicting messages. It is easy to collapse the pride that others feel for us when we do well, achieve, with the need to do well in order to deserve love.  The truth is, we deserve to be loved because of who we "be" not because of what we do. 
 
With this collapsing of "loving" with "achieving", we can head down a path of doing not what we love, but instead, doing what we are good at or what we have been rewarded for doing whether we love doing it or not.  Marcus Buckingham describes the difference in terms of our strengths.  What we are good at and fuels us, is a strength.  What we are good at but drains us, is not.  The key for you to know the difference lies in being authentic with yourself. 
 
To do what you love, look at your strengths, as defined above, and your passions.  Next list when combined, what needs might your strengths and passions serve? Completing this formula from your heart, where truth lives, versus from your head where ego and "shoulds" reside, will bring you close to the "neighborhood" of your purpose. 
 
And in that neighborhood, doing what you love just happens!
The most important love of all!
 
The older my son grows, the more aware I am of my resistance to parent him to "be the best he can be".  When he was younger, before honor rolls, high school acceptance exams and the competition for scholarships that now begins in junior high not high school, my resistance was less apparent - even to me.
 
Whether it is the pressure to get A's, be in the top percentiles of their class or on placement exams, to win in sports, to get or maintain scholarships, graduate degrees, followed by the right 
job, the next promotion, the next car, the next house... the end result is generations of inherently great people equating their self-worth with their achievements. 
 
In today's current economic situation, those suffering the most are those who lost not just their jobs, but those who did who equated what they did with who they are.  Young adults claim the lack of life direction as their biggest frustration.  Strong athletes abuse themselves with drugs to win medals, break records and gain entry into history books and halls of fame.  Men and women make choices every day trying to get to the top of their careers while amassing a list of regrets longer than life itself.  And amidst all of this, the teen suicide rate continues to climb, recent survey results show women to be more unhappy than ever and the use of anti-depressants is becoming common place. 
 
What I have very consciously parented my son to do rather than to be his best, is to "be".  Be authentic and true to who he is, what he is passionate about, what he loves and to take note along the way of what he is good at.  Consequently, he is very honest and real.  He will tell it like it is, he will not say what he thinks you or I want to hear, he will not pretend to like or value what he does not, he does not care to follow the crowd, his peers or even the authority figures in his life if he does not believe what they are saying or doing is right.  And he does not value playing the game or those who do.  
 
He also knows that this does not always serve him.  In fact, he knows that there have been and will be many more cases and times when this will actually make things much harder versus sucking it up and playing the game or by the rules of others.  At his young age, I can tell you that he doesn't care about that.  He has no intention of not being true to who he is and feels no remorse about the consequences so far.  While some things 
would be easier for both of us if he had a little "pleaser" in him, I marvel at his strength - his strong sense of self and authenticity wondering, and mostly grateful, for wherever it all came. 
 
Right in the middle of writing this today, my dear friend dropped over and as she was leaving she asked me this question right out of the blue: "So when did you decide to be how you are today?"
clearly assuming that who I am now is different than who I have always been...
 
I just smiled, struck right then and there by the truth.  For all of his fourteen years, my son has watched me as I follow my heart, authentic to who I am.  He has witnessed the times it served me well and the times that it did not.  He has never seen me waiver from what I am passionate about or what or who I love or what I know is true. 
 
And the truth is, it is when I have been the truest to myself that I have achieved what I most value.  I certainly did not lead just like my peers and I am ever so grateful for my first followers otherwise, I would have been no more than a nut!  To fully understand this, please click on "A Tribute to My First Followers"
at the end of this article!
 
My wish for my son, myself and for you, is that we never fall for or succumb to what success looks like for other people but that we continue to fully, authentically follow our hearts and trust that wherever they take us, is exactly where we are supposed to be! 
 
 
Upcoming Events! 
 
Please join me at the following events! 
 
Chicago American Marketing Association, Merchandise Mart, Chicago, Monday, February 15th at 5:30 pm.  Topic: Create Your Best Life and Career.  Learn more about this organization at this link: http://www.chicagoama.org 
 
St. Hubert's Transition
Group in Palatine, Il on February 27th at 9:00 am. where my topic will be "You're Hired!  Keys to Winning the Job!".  
 
I am also one of the expert speakers in the huge Virtual Coaching Summit hosted by Milana Leshinsky, Coaching Boom 2010, last week and this.  My "Coaching for Corporate" programs are being featured in the event's Virtual Trade Show through the end of this week.  Please contact me to learn more!
 
Wishing you your best life and biggest impact!
 
Sincerely,
Ann 
 
Ann Farrell, CPCC, PCC
Quantum Endeavors, Inc.
Copyright 2010 Quantum Endeavors, Inc.