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Articles by Christopher Edgar

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39 articles by Christopher Edgar · showing 39

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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

On Playing To Our Weaknesses

We hear a lot in personal development circles about how it’s important to “play to our strengths,” instead of wasting time trying to improve our “weak” areas. I want to rethink that notion a bit in this post. It’s probably true that we all have our natural aptitudes. It’s hard to dispute, for example, that some people are born with body types that make them better athletes. But sometimes, when we see ourselves as “bad” at some activity, it’s simply because we don’t like the way we feel when we’re doing it — not because of any inbo lack of talent. The Making Of A “Weak Point”

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

What Would You Create If No One Could See It?

To help us find a compelling direction in life, self-development writers often tell us to ask ourselves “what we’d do if we couldn’t fail.” For example, we might ask, what kind of book would we write if we knew that whatever we produced was destined to be a #1 bestseller? I’ve taken to asking myself basically the opposite question: what would I create if I knew no one would ever care about it? In other words, what would I do if I knew I would fail? Believe it or not, this question has been much more helpful to me in finding the direction and motivatio I want.

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

Embracing Writer's Block, Part 2: Content Needs Emptiness

I’ve written before about how it’s helpful, when you’re facing writer’s block, to just sit with that sense of creative emptiness, and allow it to pass away on its own — rather than beating yourself up for being uncreative, or distracting yourself from the emptiness by playing Minesweeper. When we learn to just let the writer’s block be, instead of resisting it, we get more inspired and productive in what we do. In this post, I want to expand on why this is. One thing I often say is: “If you can’t be with emptiness, you can’t be with content.” Emptiness and Procrastination

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

Relationship With Self Creates Relationship With Work

My focus used to be on helping people find fulfilling careers. Like many of us, I assumed that, as soon as we find the “right” career — something we’re passionate about, that pays the bills, that gives us a flexible schedule, or has whatever else we’re looking for in a “dream job” — we’ll get the joy we want out of our work.

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

Beyond the "Elevator Pitch"

We hear a lot in business literature about how it’s important to have an “elevator pitch” — a prepared speech about our business that’s so concise we could deliver it to someone on a brief elevator ride. We’re often told to memorize our elevator pitch and practice it in the mirror, making sure we look and sound appealing and confident. This may sound great in theory, but in my experience, when someone delivers an elevator pitch to me, it’s pretty obvious and painful.

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

"Authentic Marketing," Part 2: On Actually Caring About People

It’s become common in business literature to say that entrepreneurs who care about others tend to be more successful. Thus, say business authors, it will profit you to act like a caring person. Say “thank you,” smile, look into people’s left eye, let them do most of the talking, and so on. I think it’s true that people who are genuinely conce ed for others’ wellbeing make better entrepreneurs.

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

3 Ways To Reduce Email-Related Suffering

When I speak to a group, I almost always get questions about e-mail. “I just get so much e-mail at work and I don’t know what to do with it,” people say. Worse yet, they’ve usually tried several e-mail organizing systems, and the overwhelm they’re feeling hasn’t gone away. I think this is because a lot of suffering we experience around e-mail has nothing to do with how we organize it. Instead, it stems from the ways we think about and react to our e-mail.

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

The Circumcision Ban and the New Atheism

You've probably heard about a recent campaign in San Francisco, Califo ia to put a measure on the ballot banning circumcision. I think this campaign illustrates some of the troubling assumptions people are increasingly making about spirituality in our culture, and I'm going to look at some of those assumptions in this post.

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

Letting Ourselves Be Seen

I think that, to some degree, we all have a love/hate relationship with being seen — with letting another person see all the parts that make up who we are, whether it’s our joy, anger, grief, ambition, or something else. On the downside, if we show the other person parts we usually keep hidden, and they leave, we’ll feel hurt. The more of ourselves we let them see, the more pain we’ll experience if they decide not to be with us.

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

3 Keys to Developing Inner Productivity

Looking at the number of books and articles on organization and time management available today, you'd think the market for productivity strategies was close to saturation, and the demand for more would be dropping. But this doesn’t seem to be true. Instead, it seems like a new book, article, or seminar on productivity comes out every day. Why are people still hungry for productivity advice, even with so many techniques on the market?

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

The Yoga of Productivity, Part 2: Awareness and Allowing

In the last article in this series, I talked about some yoga asanas, or poses, that can help us restore our focus and motivation as we work — without even getting up from our desks. In this article, I’ll speak more generally about how yoga helps us develop what I call Awareness and Allowing — two capacities that are key to giving us the efficiency and enjoyment we want in what we do.

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

Growth As An Opiate, Part 5: Self-Development And The “War On Envy”

The idea that societies with more economic inequality -- whether in terms of income, net worth, or something else -- are less moral is nothing new. In the past, people have usually made this argument from a philosophical perspective -- for instance, John Rawls' famous argument that, if you designed a society from scratch, with no idea where you personally would end up on the economic scale, you'd choose a society where inequalities were only allowed if they benefited the worst-off.

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

Confidence Versus A "Confident Image"

I’ve been doing a lot of speaking recently to groups of job-seeking professionals, and predictably I tend to get questions about dealing with job interview anxiety. But if I get the chance to explore the issue more deeply with people, I often find that they’re not really interested in reducing their anxiety. Instead, they want to convince the interviewer they aren’t anxious.

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

What You Focus On Relaxes

A common idea in personal development circles is that “what you focus on expands.” For instance, if you’re feeling sad, focusing your attention on your sadness will only make you sadder. Instead, you need to distract yourself from your sadness by visualizing rainbows, playing with your cat, or doing something else to take your mind off what you’re feeling.

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

Each Person Is A Prism, Part 2: Valentine's Day Edition

Well, as advertisers are helpfully reminding us, Valentine’s Day is just around the corner. For me, as for many other people, this can be a time of irritation. This isn’t because I’m what our culture calls a “single guy.” I enjoy that, actually. It’s because this is the time of year when I get to hear people lament how long it’s been since they’ve bee “in a relationship,” or since they’ve done whatever other romantic thing they think they should be doing. One Person’s Romantic Comedy Is Another’s Horror Movie

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

Finding Compassion Through Selfishness

There’s a part of me that doesn’t care about you. It’s not here to solve your problems, lend you an ear, or serve you in any other way. It looks out for me and me alone. Isn’t that a terrible thing? Actually, I don’t think so. In fact, I think acknowledging I have a “selfish” part — and, sometimes, doing what that part wants — is key to experiencing, and expressing, real compassion for people. I Used To Be Such A Sweet, Sweet Thing

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

Productivity And “Pushing The Moment”

I shudder a little when I think about some of my old working habits. One of these habits was to do what I now call “pushing the moment.” When I’d be under time pressure, or I just wanted a task off my plate quickly, I’d tighten up my shoulders as I worked — as if I were physically trying to push the project to completion. Not surprisingly, my shoulders used to get sore pretty often. Today, when I work with someone who’s looking for focus and motivation in what they do, we often discover they’re doing the same thing.

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

Thoughts on the Mankind Project Lawsuit

Many of you probably read the recent story about the atto ey who sued his law firm, claiming his boss demanded that he attend the ManKind Project’s New Warrior Training Adventure, a weekend workshop for men, and penalized him when he refused. I won’t comment on the merits of the suit, or the specifics of the workshop (I haven’t taken it). I think the press coverage, and what it says about our culture’s attitudes toward self-development and sexuality, raise much more interesting issues. This Is Headline News?

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

"Authentic Marketing," Part 4: An Awareness-Building Exercise

In the last part of this series, I suggested that we can actually enjoy marketing when we’re able to tap into our natural compassion and conce for others. As I said, I think this often requires us to let go of the ways we protect ourselves from getting hurt when we interact with another person. For example, if we’re at a networking event, and we’re worried that others won’t take seriously what we have to offer, maybe we’ll loudly brag about our products and services, not letting anyone get a word in edgewise.

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

"Authentic Marketing," Part 3: I Can Read Your Mind

It’s not just a line from the Alan Parsons Project — it’s the truth. I know how you’re feeling and what your intentions are. What’s more, everyone else does too. Human beings are extremely empathic creatures. I’m exaggerating a little — sometimes you can trick people into buying your facade. But much of the time, when you think you’ve got us all fooled, you’re only fooling yourself. People See The Concern, Not Just The Technique I think this is the single most neglected fact in marketing literature.

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

Thoughts on "Authentic Marketing," Part 1

I’ve read a bunch of discussions in books and blogs recently on how to be “authentic” in marketing your goods and services—and, in some cases, whether authentic marketing is even possible—and I have some thoughts to contribute. I’ll offer a simple, but powerful, question to ask when you’re working on selling your stuff to guide you toward feeling more aligned with yourself as you do it. My sense is that, when we say we want to do “authentic marketing,” we mean more than simply _not lying_.

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

Calling Out Our Doubts

I admit it — I have moments when I doubt the value of everything I do in my life. I doubt whether I’m really interested in my work. I question whether the relationships in my life are worthwhile. I seriously consider whether I’d prefer a life of solitary, cave-dwelling meditation. I think doubt is wonderful.

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

Creativity and Boundary-Setting

If someone told you that a piece you wrote is garbage and you’re a moron for writing it, could you object to their behavior? When I work with people who are having trouble starting a project, this is often an area where they feel blocked. They don’t trust their ability to protect themselves against mistreatment. They feel reluctant to “put their work out there” because they don’t think they can handle the criticism that might come their way. It’s also unsurprising that these people suffer greatly at the hands (or maybe “claws” is the better word) of their inner critic.

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

The Benefits of Blankness

If you spent a moment without thinking, would you cease to exist? When I give talks about using mindfulness practices to focus on your work, at least one person usually tells me they “can’t meditate” because they can’t seem to force their mind to quiet. But often, if I get the chance to dig deeper into what’s going on for that person, what I discover is that they don’t really want their mind to be silent. They’re afraid that, if they stopped thinking for a moment, they wouldn’t be able to start again.

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

Five Reasons To Be Grateful For "Difficult People" In Your Life

Much has been said about the positive effects gratitude creates in our lives. Learning to be thankful for what we have today, and the learning experiences we’ve had in the past, empowers us with optimism and joy that help us pursue our goals. For a long time, I agreed with this idea generally ...

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

Embracing Writer’s Block, Part 5: Emptiness Is Fleeting

I do something kind of unusual when I’m writing. (I know, shockingly enough.) I keep a journal of what I’m feeling and thinking when I’m faced with writer’s block. To an outside reader, this journal would probably seem painfully repetitive, because it talks about the same worries again and again. Some common themes are: * “I think I had the last decent idea of my life a few days ago, and the well has officially run dry.” * “I’m not sure I have the brain cells left to do this kind of piece anymore.” * “I’m never going to finish this article — I might as well delete it.”

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

Growing Into Our Humanity, Part 2: The Myth of the Bulletproof Life

Once upon a time, my goal was to lead a life that was completely criticism-proof. Once I had the “right” job, credentials, relationship, and so on, no one would ever accuse me of falling short in any area. I’d get nothing but respect from everyone I worked with and knew. Of course, this plan didn’t quite pan out. As wonderful as my job and education may have looked to the world, and as hard as I worked, there would always be someone who’d come up with ways to find fault with me — whether it was a client, boss, intimate partner, or someone else.

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

Growing Into Our Humanity

I used to be in search of a book, workshop or practice that would, in a matter of hours or days, change me forever. I’d stop doubting myself, my relationships would always go smoothly, I’d become courageous enough to always say how I felt, and so on. I had this goal in mind, consciously or not, with every self-help book I bought, workshop I attended, and spiritual practice I tried. “This is going to be the one,” I’d say to myself. “This teacher will transform my life and end my suffering, once and for all.”

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

Being Angry and "Being Spiritual"

In the past, when someone said something to me that I found insulting or disrespectful, I tried to avoid reacting angrily. I told myself I was probably just being thin-skinned, and that the other person probably didn’t intend to hurt me. Besides, I said to myself in “spiritual” jargon, the anger I feel comes from my ego — my identification with my body, my accomplishments, my possessions, and so on. In reality, I am all that is, I am consciousness itself, I am Atman. How could pure spirit take offense at anything? By letting myself get upset, I dishonor my true nature.

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

Embracing Writer's Block, Part 3: The Creative Test of Faith

I used to believe that I shouldn’t sit down to write unless I had a compelling vision of what I’d say. Unfortunately, this attitude was the reason why, for many years, I didn’t do any creative writing. Sure, I wrote a lot, but only when somebody else (1) gave me a subject to write about and (2) was willing to pay me a bunch of money or give me a good grade. Eventually, I started taking a look at why I had this mindset. Why was I reluctant to just sit down and see whether any interesting ideas came up?

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

The Threat of Therapy?

Earlier, we talked about personal development critics' common claim that personal growth ideas promote an unrealistic sense of personal responsibility. Here, I'm going to respond to critics who take the opposite view -- that much self-help writing actually teaches people not to take responsibility for their lives. A frequent criticism of personal growth is that it encourages people to sit around whining about their emotional issues, rather than getting up and accomplishing something in the world. Is Therapy Just A Blame Game?

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

Seeing Life As A Celebration

You may have heard the old story of Sisyphus — the man condemned by the gods to push a boulder up a hill, only to see it roll back down and be forced to start over, for all ete ity. I think this story is a wonderful illustration of how human beings often suffer. We’re convinced that, in some way, we need to be better than we are, and we’re constantly struggling to improve. But somehow, we never seem to “get there” — perfection dangles just beyond our reach.

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

“Authentic Marketing,” Part 5: A Personal Share

“I teach people how to use mindfulness practices, like meditation and yoga, to focus while they work. I help them bring these practices into their in-the-moment experience of working — to go beyond just using them on the yoga mat or the meditation cushion.” This is a correct description of what I do. Unfortunately, it also tends to make people’s eyes roll and/or glaze over. I know this all too well, because I delivered this “elevator pitch” many times. What’s more, for many months, I kept describing what I do in this way, even though I knew it was boring and confusing people.

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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By Christopher EdgarRecently published1 topic

Creativity and Boundary-Setting, Part 2: The Limits of Boundary-Setting

As I’m sure you’ve learned firsthand, when we let people see our creative work, we risk getting criticized. But criticism by itself, I think, isn’t a problem. It only becomes problematic when we take responsibility for the critic’s suffering and anger. My Criticism Fantasy I’ll give you an example from my own life. While I was writing my book, I had a nagging tendency to imagine ways people might attack it. A very specific “worst-case scenario” kept coming to mind.

Primary topic: Life Coach and Life Coaching
Life Coach and Life Coaching
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