Brief note: Thanks to those of you who pointed out to me that I forgot to include the deadline for my Christmas 2-for-1 gift offer on the Bottom-line Bookclub in my previous post. I’ve added it now, and it’s the 18th of December. So if you sign up for the Bottom-line Bookclub using the button over here, before 18 December, then I’ll give you a second subscription for free, which you can gift to a friend (or a burned out Social Worker at a charity you support), or find a friend and split the deal together so you each get it for half price. Either way, you can spread the love. Just remember to sign up before 18 December and use this button (scroll to the bottom of the post) to get your 2-for-1 deal.

What Other Coaches & Bloggers Are Saying About Goal-Setting

In a recent video post I explained a few of my reasons why I think that traditional goal-setting is broken, and why I’m exploring alternative models for creating an “open-focused” way of focusing our thinking and making progress in making the changes we want to make.

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I’ve done my best this year (as I always do), to avoid Christmas celebrations altogether.

Actually, even though I was a reluctant angel in the annual Christmas play at preschool (yes, that’s a four year old me in the photo… don’t you just love the combo of the bored face, droopy wings and crooked halo… for me it totally sums up the results when I try my best to “be good” and do what everyone expects of me, instead of following my idea of fun!)… but as I was saying, even though I was a reluctant angel, I haven’t always been a Christmas grouch…

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As this post about how to live your life without goals indicates, for some time now, I’ve been wondering about the relevance of traditional goal setting and looking for ways to create focus and progress that address or mitigate the drawbacks within traditional goal-setting.

I wrote about some of my concerns with the traditional S-M-A-R-T goal setting model over at The Change Blog and proposed another model I cheekily called S-M-A-R-T-E-S-T goals. And over the past year I’ve been trying alternative methods out in my own life and with my current clients and been bantering with like-minded (and smart!) people like Charlie Gilkey and Jamie Smart about alternative ways to create scaffolding that’ll support you to focus and create the experiences you want in life. I’ve been trying to figure out how to balance flexibility, agility, freedom, following your heart and being in the moment with the structure that seems to help with focusing and getting stuff done.

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It’s no secret that I’m a big fangirl of author, life coach and speaker, Martha Beck. I did my life coach training under Martha and her stuff is so good that I never read the sales page before buying it. Martha is an example of true genius, and these days she’s sharing her own secrets on how to unleash your inner genius. She’s put together this really great 9min video with a few practical tips on unleashing your genius. They’re not the usual stuff we were taught in school (and in true Martha style they’re not presented in the boring and serious way of most formal education), about how to learn and how to be intelligent and so on. I’ve made a few notes for you of some of the big take-aways I got.

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One of the big take-aways I got from Max in the call was the idea that genius isn’t something that unfolds in a linear, logical fashion. It’s full of surprises and in fact, adding an element of surprise to your life will help the genius to unfold. And it’s messy, full of mistakes and failure and has stuff you can’t control. And, unlike the structured, neat and tidy, linear learning process we’re given in most educational institutions, exposing yourself to surprises, messiness, risk and experiences that are outside of your comfort zone are all great ways to develop your genius.

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I just got back from a week of travel through Southern Africa, and I feel re-connected, whole and inspired, and reminded of some of the stuff I value most in the idea of Agile living, so I wanted to share some of it with you. I had hoped I could post about it on the blog, while I was traveling, but we were often without an internet connection, and even when we were able to connect, the connection was too slow and poor to upload photos.

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