My Photo

About

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Subscribe to this blog's feed

Ideal Books

  • Blaine Bartlett: Compassionate Capitalism: A Journey to the Soul of Business

    Blaine Bartlett: Compassionate Capitalism: A Journey to the Soul of Business
    #1 International Best Seller. Compassionate Capitalism is a brilliant, provocative book that has allowed me to see the emergence of a new business paradigm. The old industrial mind-set of scarcity, zero-sum games, and profit maximization worked well for a while but it’s now destroying the human spirit and fostering the degradation of our planet. On the other hand, Compassionate Capitalism (the emerging business paradigm) outlines a wonderful blueprint for businesses in which value, passion, relationships and a new mode of leadership will allow human beings to thrive and to “feel alive” at work. (*****)

  • Blaine Bartlett: Three Dimensional Coaching: Moving Passion Into Performance

    Blaine Bartlett: Three Dimensional Coaching: Moving Passion Into Performance
    Three Dimensional Coaching integrates key parts of three of the most influential coaching models existing today. Most importantly, by using the integrated coaching approach presented in this book, Three Dimensional Coaching provides guidance to the coach to facilitate their client to effectively feel keenly and undergo or experience the variety and depth of human complexity as they move toward their goals.

  • Blaine Bartlett: Discover Your Inner Strength

    Blaine Bartlett: Discover Your Inner Strength
    Sustaining success is the topic. Co-authors include Brian Tracy, Stephen Covey and Ken Blanchard.

  • Stewart Emery and Robert Brunner: Do You Matter? How Great Design Will Make People Love Your Company

    Stewart Emery and Robert Brunner: Do You Matter? How Great Design Will Make People Love Your Company
    A must read if you are an executive that wants your organization to remain relevant. The key? Design a "customer experience" chain.

  • Richard Strozzi-Heckler: The Leadership Dojo: Build Your Foundation as an Exemplary Leader

    Richard Strozzi-Heckler: The Leadership Dojo: Build Your Foundation as an Exemplary Leader
    Profound and practical don't often go together and with this book Richard Strozzi-Heckler has managed to accomplish this rare feat. This book is one of the best treatments I've read on a topic as old as humankind. With humor, storytelling and a grasp of leadership that is truly masterful the author "leads" the reader on a journey exploring both what it means and what it takes to be an exceptional leader. It's a journey that culminates in viewing "leader" and "leadership" in a way that shatters stereotypes and makes the art of leadership accessible to any that are required to be leaders in their lives. Highly recommended!

  • Pam Bartlett: Women Connected - A Session-by-Session Coaching Guide for Women's Groups

    Pam Bartlett: Women Connected - A Session-by-Session Coaching Guide for Women's Groups
    An extraordinary and practical guide to sustaining ideals in motion. Author Marianne Williamson says "Women Connected paves the way, by bringing us closer to each other and to the truth within ourselves."

  • Arbinger Institute: The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict (BK Life)

    Arbinger Institute: The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict (BK Life)
    "...is a brilliantly written, stimulating read with a rare clarity that awakens reflection and compels action. I recommend it without hesitation to anyone interested in finding solutions to conflicts ranging from the personal to the global." ~ Gilead Sher, former Chief of Staff of the Prime Minister of Israel and chief negotiator with the Palestinians

  • Daniel Quinn: Ishmael

    Daniel Quinn: Ishmael
    Fascinating book that places the reader in a position to view our culture as humans through the eyes of an outsider. Free of prejudice and beliefs, the outsider's view is provacative. In reading this book you will come to question "truths" that, for many of us, are sorely in need of examination.

  • Geshe Michael Roach: Diamond Cutter

    Geshe Michael Roach: Diamond Cutter
    Some great tools and insights for keeping myself and my ideals in motion.

  • The Arbinger Institute: Leadership and Self-Deception

    The Arbinger Institute: Leadership and Self-Deception
    Learning how the process of self-deception works - and how to avoid it and stay in touch with our innate sense of what's right - what's ideal - is at the heart of this book.

« What's in a name? | Main | Life in the stew... »

May 24, 2006

"First, say to yourself what you would be, and then do what you have to do."

This quote from Epictetus speaks to the need to develop practices that will enable me to embody a certain way of being.

I just returned from the School Of Embodied Leadership (SOEL) - a six day program focused on developing the capacity to truly embody leadership. The program was presented by Dr. Richard Strozzi-Heckler, founder of the Strozzi Institute and the discipline of Somatic Coaching. A major thrust of the program revolves around the development of what Strozzi-Heckler calls "practices". These are activities that support and literally enable being the kind of leader, the kind of person, that produces the results we want in life - for ourselves and others. Practices are the activities in which I regularly and mindfully engage that over time develop into unconscious habits. The significance of this is that it is my habits that form and inform my leadership "body".

The old addage "practice makes perfect" is actually a bit off base. The truth is that "practice makes habits"! With a bit of thought and a lot of discipline it is these practices - these activities that allow me to habitually keep my ideals in motion.

Posted by on May 24, 2006 at 02:24 PM |

| | | |

Comments