Christopher Edgar

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Success Coaching Expert

Christopher Edgar

Christopher Edgar Quick Facts

Main Areas
Career Transition and Success Coaching
Career Focus
Author, Speaker, Personal Coach
Affiliation
Purpose Power Coaching

Chris Edgar is an author, speaker and personal coach who helps professionals find productivity and satisfaction in their work using mindfulness and spiritual practices. Chris's book, Inner Productivity: A Mindful Path to Efficiency and Enjoyment in Your Work, is packed with exercises for developing focus and motivation in what you do. You can find out more at www.InnerProductivity.com.

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Articles by this expert

SelfGrowth articles and saved writing connected to this expert.

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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”

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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A common reason people attack The Secret (and now, Rhonda Byrne's sequel, The Power) is that it promotes a self-centered and "consumerist" attitude. Byrne, critics say, encourages us to focus on "manifesting" luxury cars, expensive shoes, and so on, rather than on helping others.

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I had an interesting conversation the other night with a man I met at an event. We were talking about an uncomfortable truth—the fact that, no matter how inspired and motivated you may feel about what you do for a living, after a while it tends to start feeling like, well, work. That is, you ...

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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?

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Favorite Quotes & Thoughts from Christopher Edgar

My Goal Is To Help You:

* Find and pursue your true calling in your career

* Find more satisfaction and productivity in what you do

* Overcome fears and other emotional blocks getting in the way of fulfilling your purpose

* Plan and make the next steps in finding and living your calling

How We’ll Work Together

The process I follow with each client depends on their unique situation. However, I usually start by working with the client to create a list of the features of their ideal career. These may range from concrete aspects of their dream career, like job responsibilities and income, to the feelings–for instance, the joy, significance and peace–they want to experience.

To inspire the client and focus their unconscious mind on achieving these goals, I put them through a visualization where they imagine themselves in a career with all of their ideal features. I also have the client write a letter to themselves dated at the point in the future when they hope to be in their dream career situation, congratulating themselves for what they’ve accomplished.

What if you aren’t sure what you want? I often find that people who believe they don’t know what they want are actually just in need of a good listener. When they find someone who won’t judge or criticize them for stating their desires, and who will treat their wants as important, they discover that they actually have a very clear idea of what’s best for them. If that isn’t enough, there are also techniques that can be used to unearth people’s passions and aspirations from their unconscious.

After we establish the client’s vision, my work with the client usually consists of setting specific milestones for reaching the client’s goals, holding the client accountable for meeting those commitments, brainstorming solutions to challenges the client may face, and helping them overcome emotional blocks in the way of getting where they want to be.

Not everyone I work with is interested in a career transition–some of them come to me just wanting more satisfaction in their current careers, and some discover in the course of our coaching that they can find fulfillment where they are. These people’s goals in coaching might be, for example, improving communication with colleagues, developing the confidence to market their products more effectively, or finding more focus and productivity.

A coaching relationship typically lasts at least a few months. It’s helpful to stay in regular contact even after we determine the client’s objectives and remove any mental obstacles preventing the achievement of those goals. As we move along our paths in life, we often have to deal with unanticipated challenges, and correct our courses accordingly. Having someone around to listen to our conce s and keep us on track as we face those challenges is an immense asset.

Working with someone who is devoted to your success, who will hold you to the commitments you make to yourself, and with whom you can exchange ideas, is an invaluable resource. It isn’t always comfortable—being held to the goals you set for yourself, and taking a hard look at those areas where you’re holding back, can be a strenuous experience. But stepping out of your comfort zone and breaking with your old patterns of behavior are often critical to achieving the results you want.

If you feel called to finding and following your purpose in life, and you’d like a committed partner in your journey, I hope we’ll get a chance to work together.

Contacting Christopher Edgar

How to get started

If you're interested in finding out more about my book, Inner Productivity: A Mindful Path to Efficiency and Enjoyment in Your Work, or exploring the possibility of coaching with me, please visit my website at www.InnerProductivity.com.