Joshua Gold Coaching

On Accountability

To whom? To yourself? To your loved ones? To people who are in your field, your coach or mentor? Maybe to people, you don't even know? Does it work?

Does being accountable work? The answer that most coaches and people, in general, would say is an astounding, overwhelming, unanimous, and overpowering YES.

I am here to challenge that YES. That confident YES! I have questioned that YES time and time again. Now I am not saying that it doesn't work for most people. Damn, the immediate results that people get once they hire a coach are not only incredible and measurable; I would venture to bet that the number one reason for those successes is that they are accountable to someone other than themselves.

Though what if they don't care? What if they don't have skin in the game? What if they are complacent? What then? What do they do? What is the challenge for them? What makes them so different from all the others? Is something wrong with their wiring? Or have they just not...

I am grateful for who I am
I am grateful for where I'm going
I am grateful for where I've been. 

When we think of our lives, we usually think about the past, present, and future. 

In this perspective, I was thinking about the present, future, and then the past. 

Where I am today, where I want to go, and where I've been is how I think about my life and how I look at the way I structure my thinking. Whether it's about a course I am developing or a book that I am writing. 

What's the significance of that, and is there any difference in the way we approach things?

If we look at the traditional way of looking at things, we are putting the past first. What effect does this have on how you might frame your thoughts, behaviors, and personality. How are our lives affected by thinking this way? We might give the past more weight than it deserves. We also could keep revisiting the same things over and over again. It might be a less efficient or effective process of dealing...

"You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. 

I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be.

 It's their mistake, not my failing." Physicist Richard Feynman, on dealing with expectations. 

I know that you have heard this before. It's all about the stories that other people tell us. Other people's expectations of who we ought to be to the point we think we are supposed to be. We want to please those people, so we spend years trying to be that person. Just to wake up one day trying to figure out how I got here, feeling trapped and not knowing what to do next. If you are lucky, you are finding this out early enough in your life that you don't have the responsibilities of other people, like a wife and children, a mortgage, and car payments. College education to look forward to. You get the picture. Don't get me wrong; I am not saying that should deter you from what you want to do or who you want to be. It...

“If you want to live an exceptional and extraordinary life, you have to give up many of the things that are part of a normal one” Srinivas Ro

Do you get a little anxious when reading that quote? Why do I have to give up anything to have an extraordinary life? Can’t I have it all?

Why would you? What you have now is not all that you want. What you have is keeping you from achieving your potential. It’s scary to think that you need to give up safe and comfortable things for the uncertainty of what’s next. Who is that person that needs to be discovered, unwrapped, sculpted to achieve greatness? I love the analogy of our lives being a piece of marble, and we are the sculptor, the artist that chips away slowly, uncovering the beauty that is ultimately there. I think of Michaelangelo sculpting David.

It’s exciting to think about living an exceptional life. Though are you willing to make the sacrifices. Are you ready to leave behind the comfort of the...

"I am going to stay out of my own way today, I am going to keep my Ego in check, and I am going to fight The Resistance every step of the way. "

Easier said than done for sure. So how do we do this? 

First, be aware that these are just obstacles in our lives. Remembering that obstacles are opportunities for growth. With that mindset, how can you not have a great day? A failure is only one if you don't learn from it. Any day that you know something new is a good day. So let's start from that perspective. 

I am going to stay out of my own way: 

How are we going to do that? Well, to say there is one correct answer is foolish. So I am going to just make some suggestions. Things that have worked for me in the past and are still working. Realize that as you grow and change, the actions you need to take will need to change. So be flexible. 

1. Set up your day the night before. In other words, have a good evening routine. Know what your day will look like...

Are You Deserving?

Is it a tricky question or a trick question? I've heard people say, "you are what you're committed to. " Measuring this by looking to see what you have in your life. At your relationships, at your bank account, at yourself in the mirror. What you currently have and what you see is what you are committed to. You can also say that's what you deserve. Don't mistake that for what your potential is but what you deserve. Not what you are worthy of but again, what you deserve. The work that you have put in each and every day is what you currently have in your life. So if you don't like what you see, you have can choose to change it. But you need to be brutally honest with yourself. You have to be truthful. Otherwise, nothing is going to change.

This is what I was faced with and the question, amongst many others, that I ask myself often. If things aren't going as I planned or hoped, am I deserving? Usually, the brutally honest answer is no. There are things that I...

A while back I wrote a piece called “Distraction Assassinators” and described what I considered the top 5 distractions in life and workplace and how to eliminate or in my case ASSASSINATE them ( you can get the pdf by going on my website, www.joshuagoldcoaching.com, and downloading it). It was a bit tongue and cheek with Lucy Lui as O-Ren Ishii, her character in Kill Bill, on the cover of the piece.

The other afternoon I was sitting at my desk trying to get some work done. My superpower time is before noon. So any Frogs that need to be consumed better happen then. So you can imagine that I was having a difficult time focusing on what I had wanted to do and the words came to me like an almost out-of-body experience, “quiet the noise — focus on the essential”. I imagine this is what Kevin Costner felt like when he heard a voice from afar say “ if you build it they will come”.

If I break it down, we are dealing with two very fundamentally...