Edge Effect Coaching

In the pursuit of a goal, one area of intentional practice and growth has to be focus. Oliver Burkeman asks, "What will your life have been in the end, but the sum total of everything you spent it focusing on?" I don't know about you, but I can get focused....on all the wrong things.  I focus on my to do list and my not done list.  I focus on figuring how to do something, instead of doing it.   I am realizing more and more that I have to take the time to pull off to the side of the road.   Stand on the edge and look around.   To Stop. To Observe.    I need to get out of my car (my head) and look around.  Take the time to breathe and simply observe.    Without judgement or condemnation.  Without expectation or analysis.  To look, listen, feel and note what is.  And Think . "Am I still going in the right direction?"  "Will this road take me to where ...

I need to find where I first heard this, so I can make sure I credit them.  Instead of us focusing on the problems in relationship, we need to see relationships as the solution! In our own spiritual lives, marriages, with our children and extended family members, colleagues and those we serve...building a healthy responsive and positive relationship is the solution. Without relationship, we implement strategies and they become shallow and hollow and isolated.   Without relationship, feedback becomes shame. Without relationship, growth feels purposeless. Without relationship, methodology is unfocused and weak. Relationship keeps us focuses on the individual and the purpose for everything we do.  Relationship allows us to build the trust and trust is critical for growth. Relationship is our beginning base and our motivation. Relationship and true connection is the glue keeping us grounded, secure, grateful and full of hope! Relationship helps focus on who w...

The roots of a relationship are just as important as the roots of a plant.   Changing behavior has to take place within the context of the relationship!  It has to grow out of the relationship! This takes much longer!  It requires us to move from fixing behavior, to building a relationship from which new behavior grows!  One of my biggest concerns is when we try to teach a new skill or stop a challenging behavior as separate entity.  As if the behavior is tied to the heart of a person.  We can't chop off a tree at its roots to correct the branches.  Neither can we separate the behavior from the need!   The skills are important and have to be explicitly taught.  For example, I can't calm down if I don't know how!  However, I can be given every calm down tool in the box and it will be meaningless and not internalized without a secure base of relationship. Positive behavior support is not a program or a curricu...

We had a teeter totter on my playground when I grew up.  It was the most challenging and daunting piece of play equipment.  More challenging than the old homemade swing and the basketball court on the gravel parking lot. Usually the older kids from our one room school took over the teeter totter right away to test their abilities to knock each other off.  I couldn't wait for my chance to try to stay on the top while the older kids worked to knock me off.   This is the visual I have in mind when I'm working with a child who struggles with challenging behavior.  It seems as if the child's challenging behavior sits at the top and people are trying to knock it off.  Instead of calming the behavior, it ups the ante and gives children like me an opportunity for a challenge! What I've learned is behavior is more like a scale.  If we tip the scales on the side of the protective factors, the challenging behavior will come down.  Building st...

My first real connections were with the land and its animals and plants.  Growing up on a ranch in a geographically isolated area of the High Plains, gave me this rare opportunity.   The opportunity to have the time and space to develop and build observation and reflective functioning skills. Skills stemming from the thousands of small interactions within daily routines.  Watching the clouds, the birds and the land was (and still is) a daily morning ritual.  It was more than seeing...it was also a feeling.  A sense of connection to the wind and the land and a fascination with the edges. The edges seemed to be where all the happening was!  The edge between the tree grove and the prairie breaks were where we would most likely run upon the animals.  The deer and the coyotes as well as the livestock.  If I wanted to go and catch a horse in the trees, I knew they were usually along one of the edges.  They would escape to the trees in weat...