Published monthly by Sharon Eakes, Hope Unlimited, LLC
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FOCUS: Appreciate
Disciplines: Personal Mastery, Systems Thinking

"One strong dose of appreciation
can turn your perception around 180 degrees"
Doc Childre and Howard Martin

THOUGHTS:

I'm always searching for foods that
--> taste good
--> are good for me, and
--> are cheap.
Peaches fill the bill this time of year. The cost benefit ratio is superb!

Here's a behavior that meets essentially the same criteria: to appreciate.
--> It feels good
--> It's good for you
--> It's easy
Appreciation means some blend of thankfulness, admiration, approval and gratitude. In their breakthrough book, HeartMath Solution, Childre and Martin talk about the health benefits of appreciating. Appreciating shifts your heart into a healthy "heart frequency."

We can appreciate just about anything - nature, ideas, art, things, people (including ourselves.)

EXAMPLES:

1) Max is my coaching client. His teenage daughter, Anna, was driving him crazy. Her room was a mess and she had to be nagged continually to help with household tasks. I asked if he could find anything about her to appreciate. He laughed, "She's very funny - always has been." I asked him to look for other things to appreciate in her that week. The next time we talked, Max was relaxed when he talked about Anna. When he shifted to look for things to appreciate, he noticed how nice she was to her little brother, Joe. Max told her he appreciated the way she helped Joe. She said something funny back and they had a good laugh. Later Max noticed Anna was helping with the dishes.

2) While watching the horror of Hurricane Katrina, I find myself appreciating the basic, taken-for-granted things of life, like food and water and the comfort of home.

We can think of "appreciating" as part of a continuum with love and caring. Love is big, wonderful, and sometimes difficult. "Caring for" is often fulfilling and also hard. Appreciating is a tiny shift in your head that is EASY.

In the financial world, something that "appreciates" grows in value. I'm thinking that appreciating appreciates!

COACHING TIPS:
1) At least five times today and every day for the next week, stop and appreciate something or someone.
2) Tell people what you appreciate about them - and that includes your spouse, your children, the clerk at the grocery store, your boss.
3) Develop appreciating into a habit of mind. It may be the single easiest way to improve your life.

INVITATIONS:

Instead of having a telegathering this month, I want to invite you to a very special event called Calling for Action:Coaching Works, a FREE, marathon series of teleclasses sponsored by my local coaches association, the Greater Pittsburgh Coaches Association on September 29. I'm offering a class at 1 p.m. Eastern called" What Do You Really Want?" Go to www.greaterpittsburghcoaches.org for details and to register.
Reach me: 1-888-907-HOPE (4673)or e-mail sharon@hopellc.com. I am a personal and executive coach and would be happy to talk with you about coaching.

Each month FRESH VIEWS focuses on a single topic, relates it to one of the five disciplines of a learning community, and offers a coaching tip and a follow-up telegathering. Please forward it to friends and colleagues. My purpose in writing FRESH VIEWS is to nurture, prod and encourage readers to think and talk about these topics with their families, friends and colleagues. Mine is only one view. Multiple conversations may deliver us to insights only hinted at here. Such a process sustains the vitality of learning relationships, learning families, learning organizations and learning communities.