Storytelling and metaphor are powerful tools in coaching, but there is another tool that may be even more fundamental. Questions. The questions we ask ourselves and the questions we ask our clients shape what we notice, how we feel, and the choices we make next. In fact, one of the most useful id...

A bear walks into a bar and says to the bartender, "I'll have a pint of beer and a.......... packet of peanuts." The bartender asks, "Why the big pause?" (a phonological ambiguity) A grasshopper walks into a bar, and the bartender says, "Hey, we have a drink named after you!" The grasshopper look...

  “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” – Aristotle It is true, I believe, that champions do what others talk about doing. Lance Armstrong has removed himself from the staple of role models, but his use of steroids doesn’t change the fact that he also train...

  I’ve noticed that in coaching, when I explain something clearly, people often nod. They understand it. Intellectually, at least. And then… not much changes. But when I tell a story, something different happens. They lean in a little. They relax. They stop trying to figure out what the “right a...

"I have decided to stick to love; hate is too great a burden to bear."             ― Martin Luther King   Happy Valentine's. February is the month that reminds us, whether we ask for it or not, that love is not an idea. It’s a practice. It’s something felt. Something chosen. Something lived. A...

Over the course of the past four or five months I've had the pleasure of guiding a group of excellent students into the world of what we call "Neo-Ericksonian Hypnosis." (A short explanation for the name is simply that we teach what we can of Erickson's approaches and also add understandings fro...