Contents:

- A Note from The Coach

- Life Skills: Getting Out of the Way - Part II

-Feature Article: Is "Ego" O.K?

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Well Hello again. Yeh, I know you haven't heard from me in a
while. There are a couple of really good reasons for that. The
first one is that I have been very busy writing a manual for
parents of teenage boys. Having run youth programs for teenagers
for a long time, combined with raising thirteen foster kids and
a son of my own, I have played this game and know it well. In
addition to my coaching parents, I have decided to write a
manual of the topics that regularly brought up by my clients. I
am accumulating chapters on my parents blog [go to
http://TheParentsCoach.com and click on the blog link. ] If you
are or have been a parent to teenagers, especially teenage boys,
I would love you to read the blogs and give me feedback, as well
as questions I could answer in future articles.

Reason two is that I really did not have anything that I thought
would be of interest to you. I am becoming painfully aware,
every time I look at my in-box of my email program, how many
other folks ezines I am not reading due to a lack of time.
Rather than artificially come up with some contrived articles
just because I am scheduled to produce another ezine is
disrespectful of your time to read it. So from now on, you will
only get an ezine from me when I think that you might truly
profit from my writings. Your feedback is, again, encouraged.
The truth is that this is not a new publishing policy for me. My
ezine production has always been guided by when I thought I had
something to say rather than by a fixed schedule. The only thing
that this announcement will do is to alleviate my guilt of not
keeping to an unrealistic schedule.

This issue has two articles. The first is a continuation of an
article I wrote in a previous ezine. The subject is about how we
can perform exquisitely if we would just consciously get out of
the way. The other article is one I have wanted to write about
for a long time. I have always been bothered by the let's stamp
out ego crowd. As you will read, I believe a well functioning
ego is a great and essential thing to have. What most people
call ego is actually the symptom of a lack of one.

On a personal note, I will be celebrating 65 continual years of
breathing on Tuesday, July 24th.

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Getting Out of the Way - Part II    

I sometimes find that my writing hits a dead end. I am writing a
piece and the thoughts just stop coming. The words are no longer
flowing out of my mind as they normally would do. I am spending
eons on each sentence. The creative world has stopped. The more
I try to create, the worse it gets and the greater my level of
frustrating becomes, until, as just happened to me, minutes ago,
I rip the pages I have just painstakingly written out of the
notebook and throw them across the room! Then I remember my own
directions on how to win the writing game, "get out of the way!"
I work best when I just put the pen to the paper and let the
right side of my brain, the creative side, just do its work and
put pure thought onto the page (as it is doing now). When I set
up the conditions for that process to happen, I get great
results.

What happened with my writing today is a great case-in-point.
Actually what happened with my writing for the last three days
is the full case-in-point. I decided that my next ezine would be
an article on how to win the game of life. A great topic and one
that I regularly coach people to do. The intro flowed out
effortlessly. Then instead of just writing, I started to craft
the article to make sure that everything was presented logically
and succinctly. Each word and paragraph became harder and harder
to write. It was as if I had started out on a walk on what was a
level road and as I progressed down that road, some ethereal
force kept raising the angle of the road until I was finally
clawing my way up a cliff.

Well, it was not an ethereal force that raised the pitch of my
writing road. It was that old destroyer of creative thought, the
busy body left brain, which is sometimes referred to as the
conscious mind. The more I "tried" to get it correct, the worse
it got, because the left "conscious" brain which is the editor,
not the creator. The right "unconscious" brain is the creator. I
had the process reversed. Editing as one is creating does not
work and is a prescription for creative disaster.

As I ripped the pages out of the notebook and threw them across
the room, I said, "What am I doing? I just destroyed three days
of effort!" I then realized that in that last statement was the
clue to the solution. The clue was the work "effort." Writing,
and any creative process, when it is happening as a pure right
brain unconscious activity, is an "effortless" process. It just
flows out.

My first impulse had been to retrieve the destroyed pages and
try to resurrect my work but this new bit of enlightenment about
"effortlessness" directed me to let that work go and get back to
the basics which, in my case of creative writing, is to put the
pen to the page and keep it moving and moving and moving until
the right brain once again starts putting pure thought out onto
the page. You are now reading the result of that action.

I have been talking about the writing process. This same
prescription can apply to any creative endeavor. If you are a
sculptor or a singer or a photographer or a creative whatever,
the same prescription for getting out of a creative dead-end
applies, STOP TRYING TO DO IT, AND JUST DO IT! Let's say you are
a photographer. You can't seem to shoot a decent picture and
your composition is out to lunch and you notice your level of
frustration is getting out of sight and your output continues to
drop. Stop what you are doing, take your camera and go for a
walk. Pretend you are a wide-eyed child who is seeing the world
for the very first time. Start taking pictures of it as fast as
new scenes pop into view. Just shoot what you see; the bee on
the flower, the ant dragging a bit of something bigger than
itself, the cloud reflected in the mud puddle. Just keep
shooting. Keep your attention on the subject in front of you and
the nest one and so on until you are around the block and back
to the studio. Now go back to the project in which you were
bogged down and shoot it as you have been shooting the subjects
with the same spontaneous abandon as you were shooting the
subjects on your creative walk. Be aware of when your left brain
tries to get you back into the "proper" mechanics of
photography, like composition and all that, and gently go back
to just effortlessly shooting neat pictures. Notice the
difference.

Creative stuff is supposed to be fun! When it stops being fun,
you can bet that the left critical brain just took over. Lack of
fun, decreasing productivity and raising frustration are the
clues to this happening. That is when you STOP efforting and go
do your equivalent of the creative walk to get your right brain
back in the pilot's chair of you mind.

Postscript: I now have the destroyed
notebook pages tacked on my office
wall to remind me of this lession. 

©2007, Jason Wittman

Would you like to reprint this article? You can, as long as you
publish the entire article and include this complete blurb with
it: "Life Coach Jason Wittman publishes "My Coach Jason's Tips
for Winning at Life" monthly ezine. If you're ready to
jump-start your life, you can find more FREE tips, FREE
subscription information, and how you can benefit by his
coaching at http://MyCoachJason.com "

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Is "Ego" O.K.?                    

In many religions and in 12-Step programs like Alcoholics
Anonymous, the emphasis is on deflating and eliminating one's
ego. There is a parallel emphasis on modesty. The unfortunate
consequence of these emphases is the stifling of people's
ability to build their internal understanding of how valuable,
worthwhile and O.K. they are. In other words, it stifles
building of positive self-esteem. When this development is
stifled, so is their ability to know that they can handle
whatever is in front of them, their self-confidence.

What those religions and Programs are really campaigning against
is "False Ego" or better put, the manifestation of a lack of
ego. Ego, in its true sense, is just another way of saying
"self-esteem." When one has very low self-esteem, there is a
tendency to cover and over compensating for that internal lack
by externally and becoming either verbally or physically
aggressive. The best defense is a good offense strategy. Those
behaviors are obnoxious and possibly dangerous to others and are
the legitimate targets of religions and programs. Unfortunately,
by labeling those actions as the product of ego, the remedy of
modesty inadvertently leads to stifling the ability to develop
self-esteem.

People who have very high self-esteem, a well functioning
positive ego, are way less likely to aggressively or obnoxiously
push a recitation of how their abilities are better than
everyone else's. If they have a great sense of their own worth
and abilities, they have little or no need for others to
acknowledge them. They lose the need to impress others and even
more important, the need for others approval, the root cause of
co-dependence.

I have developed a concept that I call "The Law of Opposites."
It states that anything people have to incessantly tell or
demonstrate to others about themselves is an indication that
they feel the opposite inside. The bully is really a wimp inside
and is covering that feeling with a great offense. Those who
always have to be right (even when they are not) feel very
inferior and less-than on the inside. Shakespeare understood
this concept in "Hamlet" with the observation " The Lady doth
protest too much, Me'thinks."

My experience growing up is a good example of how the emphasis
on modesty leads to low self-esteem. My very loving and well
intentioned Mother's stock response to my talking about my
abilities and my wins was "self-praise stinks!" A very
disastrous thing to tell a child. It was a set-up for always
needing other people to tell me how good I was and a huge need
for their approval. It took me many years of painful work as a
young adult to finally get that I was O.K., as is. With my
photography and other art I have created, I no longer have to
push it in front of others with the hope of getting a good
rating from them. I now can enjoy my creations and my internal
acceptance of my creative abilities remains unchallenged by
other people harsh criticisms. Their opinions have truly become
none of my business.

My mother's blanket enforcement of the modesty code had no room
for making the distinction between bragging and verbally
acknowledging my abilities by publicly taking the win. Bragging
is one of those overcompensating actions of those with low
self-esteem. People with a well formed positive ego will only
let others know of their abilities when asked. They are also
able to "take the win" by merely saying, "thank you," when given
a compliment, without the need to either hold the triumph over
others or to modify the victory by acting modest, "It was really
just good luck," or " I got it on sale at the thrift shop."

So ignore the rantings and encyclicals of the ego/modesty
police. Own your abilities, talents, achievements and skills.
Regularly look in the mirror, smile and tell yourself one nice
and totally true thing about yourself. Counter beating yourself
up by saying two positive things for every negative one. Allow
yourself to publicly state your abilities and talents when asked
and accept others praise when given. Do all this and you are on
the way to creating a very happy, wonderful, confident and
loving self. From that space all your relationships with others,
both intimate and worldly, will flourish. When you have an over
abundance of these internal things, relationships can only
flourish.

©2007, Jason Wittman

Would you like to reprint this article? You can, as long as you
publish the entire article and include this complete blurb with
it: "Life Coach Jason Wittman publishes "My Coach Jason's Tips
for Winning at Life" monthly ezine. If you're ready to
jump-start your life, you can find more FREE tips, FREE
subscription information, and how you can benefit by his
coaching at http://MyCoachJason.com "

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The Playing Life Full-Out Roundtable!
A New Weekly Tele-gathering

We are on summer break. We will start again in the Fall.

Please join me for this on-going free roundtable that will focus
primarily on the areas of Inner Game issues of getting certainty
and confidence in one's abilities to play full-out in both
business and life. It will be free and will start again in the Fall.
It will be not so much coaching as part tele-class, part Q&A and
part mutual discussion on pertinant topics, with laser coaching
when its called for.

To sign up for this Roundtable, just fill in the form below and
push the "Submit" button. I will immediately put you on
the access list and send you back the telephone number
you will need to call and a pin number that will let you in.
You will personally be notified of the Fall start date.

Looking forward to talking with you then.

In future issues, I will be selecting a question that is related
to Life Coaching and/or one of the topics I have presented or
one that you would like me to cover. Just send your questions to
questions@mycoachjason.com

Life Coach Jason Wittman, MPS, brings to his life coaching
practice extensive experience in the therapeutic counseling and
coaching worlds. He is a Certified Hypnotherapist,
Neuro-Linguistic Programming Practitioner and holds a masters in
counseling psychology. He has been coaching his clients to
achieve winning lives for themselves since the mid-1980s. He
believes that any endeavor in life and business can be designed
into a winnable game worth playing. He assists his clients to
design winnable games worth playing and coaches them to win.

If you would like to explore, risk-free, the possibility of
investing in a Life Coaching relationship with me as your coach.
I offer a brief 30 minute phone consultation where we can
discuss your questions about coaching and if I am the right
person for you. If you would like to schedule an appointment,
email me at freeconsultation@mycoachjason.com

Jason Wittman Life Coaching
P.O. Box 46606
West Hollywood, CA 90046

Info@MyCoachJason.com
http://TheParentsCoach.com
http://MyCoachJason.com

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