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The more work I do on myself, the more work I see there is to do. :)

My family was in town this weekend. And I could see how influenced I was to follow age-old patterns — to give in to the strong-willed brother, to view in-laws through an old, outdated lens.

After spending the day with family, I found myself in bed, scratching my head about what I thought and said and questioning some of what had been on autopilot for me.

Happy International Coaching Week (ICW)!

The theme of this year's ICW is Reimagine the Future. I notice that many conferences this year have a similar theme - looking to the future. It's as if we collectively have realized that, in some way, the pandemic changed what we thought we knew.

For ICW, my team and I put together a series of brief (5ish minute) videos on Coach as Instrument: The Future of Coaching. You can see all the videos this week here.

The idea of bearing witness can seem passive, as if we are somehow a bystander. And yet, when we bear witness to our clients in our coaching, something remarkable can happen. As Terry Tempest Williams says, "when we do not divert our gaze, something is revealed — the very marrow of life."

Our witnessing alone is generative and it's anything but passive. To give bear witness some dimension, I created the five A’s of Bearing Witness:

1. Attending — paying attention to the experience of the client

Most of us know about Stephen Covey's second habit of highly effective people: Begin with the end in mind.

Yet, how often do we apply it to our lives?

It can be daunting to think about the end of our life and how we want to experience it. I'm informed by the work of Bronnie Ware, the palliative care nurse who wrote about her experience with terminal patients in the last weeks and months of their lives and what they regretted. She chronicled it in this post, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.

I spent last week working with a group of internal OD professionals who support a couple of the major health care systems in Canada.

They are smart, dedicated, capable and compassionate humans who've been supporting a system that's been under intense stress for more than two years. They were tired.

And as we (Shani and I) held space for them and honored who they were, what they'd done, and what they'd been through, they began to feel. They began to feel the feelings that they had tucked away for months because they just had to keep on keeping on. By creating the space and allowing them the

I attended the TED conference in Vancouver last week. For the week of the conference, it must be the most diverse population of people with the highest passion per capita of anywhere on the planet.

Throughout the week, TED hosted over a hundred talks on a broad range of topics from climate change to neuroscience to blockchain to meditation (and seemingly everything in between). In the talks, we heard people's stories, stories of what they were passionate enough about to dedicate their lives to.

In one particular talk, the artist, JR, spoke of a project he did for a maximum-

I've been preparing to travel from the US to Canada for the past 24 hours (heading to the TED conference in Vancouver BC). It's been like preparing for a marathon. Buying and packing clothes that are appropriate head to toe (not just chest up). Remembering how to pack, where my frequent flyer numbers are, what credits I have, how to download boarding passes and where to keep them, what the COVID restrictions are for travel into another country and back to the US, and how to follow them and so much more.

Finally, this morning and called an Uber to head to the airport. When I finally sat down in the car, I realized just how tense my entire body was and for the first time in a couple of days, my whole body relaxed. The future (at least until

What's Inspiring Me
So I can continue to do what I do and inspire my clients as well

It is said that Ukraine and Russia are in peace talks. The skeptical say it may be a ploy by the Russians to buy time. Talk about giving the enemy a seat at the table! It seems evident to us that Ukraine would be interested in peace talks. And how often, in our own lives, do we proactively turn and face our greatest fears? The relationship that's not working, the child that's not thriving, the parent that's slipping away. Facing our greatest fears means moving toward the possibility of a difficult realization. And better to give our fears a seat at our table and acknowledge what is than resist. That which we

What's Keeping Me Current
 So that I have a better understanding of my client's context 

I've been renting rooms and homes in Kyiv, Ukraine on Airbnb over the past couple of weeks, simply to support real people on the ground in the middle of a war. The Ukrainians getting the money are so grateful.

Airbnb is making remarkable efforts to support and house Ukrainians refugees. Learn more here.

What do you believe about why what's happening in Ukraine is happening?

How is whatever you believe impacting your experience of it?

How clear are you on what you believe and its source?

As coaches, we know that we thread our experience through whatever we believe. But where do our beliefs come from?

Historically, intentional "belief" has been the domain of religion (yet, religions can have agendas of their own). And conditioned belief has been the result of