Did you grow up in a dysfunctional family? Me too.

One thing that I think is true for all of us—we never completely drop the roles that we developed in order to effectively give and get love, how to feel safe, how to make people love us. We learn what is OK to say, what our parents want from us, and how to feel good.

I for one played the role of the "hero" or "rescuer" for much of my life. When I saw someone in need—well it was my job to make sure that I met their need.

Eventually, this doesn't work. The role I created to make sure I got my needs met in the end wasn't going to be able to help others. As soon as I stopped getting what I needed, I had to either pick another codependent role or another person from whom to get my needs met. I did both of those things with lots of consequences.

How do we stop living in our codependence? How do we choose to create something different for our life?  Read More »

Typical coaching question: If you could know that you wouldn't fail, what would you do with your life?

OK—got it? Know your answer? Now what?

Here's the problem with this question, you can't know you won't fail—in fact failure is part of the plan. Failure is how you learn. 

The paralyzed are still paralyzed. It may be helpful for us to come up with the thing we want to do for the world. But that's where the question stops serving us. 

She wants to know. She doesn't want to fail. She decides.  "I'll come up with a plan. A fail-safe plan."

Fail safe plans don't exist. You can't learn to fly on the ground. 

So here is my step-by-step plan for you to do what it is that you want to do with your life.

Step 1: JUMP  Read More »