OyChicago blog

Several months ago, after a three-and-a-half-year hiatus, I decided that I was officially returning to a career in life coaching. It helped that two individuals had already reached out to me and asked if I would coach them. I had the start of a business and the desire to pursue it. Now, I just had to put in the time into planning, networking and marketing to actually make something of my new venture, 100 Reasons to Win.

In the midst of all this planning, networking and marketing, I found myself catching up with an old friend and he mentioned an Anthony Robbins quote that made me stop and think.

"…Most people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in a decade."

He was sharing how impressed he was with all that I had accomplished in the last 10 years and making me blush in front of all the good folks in the coffee shop that I was working from that afternoon. Having been one of the first people to suggest that I meet with a life coach, he was intimately aware of the profound impact that working with coaches had made on my life.

Ten years ago in April 2003, I was 130 pounds heavier, desperate for love, working the wrong job and financially unstable. One year later, I had tried hard to take a few steps forward, but in actuality had taken several steps back. Now, 10 years later, I am grateful for the monumental and positive changes in all four of those areas. I weigh less today than when I graduated high school; I eat and live healthier, having completed over a dozen distance races, including a marathon; I am married and very much in love with my beautiful wife; I healed and improved relationships with many friends and family members over the years; what I accumulated in debt by 2003, I not only paid off, but have managed to save the equivalent amount for retirement. I worked with coaches to win at the game of health, relationships and career.

Then and now

What do the next 10 years hold for me? A past coach, Rita Hyland, would ask me, "How good can I stand it?" Meaning, if things are this amazing now, could I stand it, if they got even better? That is an important part of life coaching, supporting individuals, so they get everything they always wanted only to challenge them to ask for even more.

In her book A Return to Love, Marianne Williamson sums it all up beautifully:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."