The Following Article was Published in the Cascade Business News, March 1999.

"What is Your Bigger Game?"

By Ann Golden Eglé, PCC , CPCC Of Golden Visions Success Coaching

What is your big game in business? In life? Is it a part of your company/personal philosophy? Mission statement?

Few of us take the time to stand back and look at how our daily thoughts and actions affect this larger picture. Oftentimes it takes a crisis to force us to end our small thinking in order to move ahead.

More and more people hire a personal coach to help them gain clarity and move more boldly into their bigger game in good times as well as bad.

This is not to say that they want to fix something. Nothing is broken. Their desire is to modify, diversify, add to or reduce in order to jump into their bigger game and accomplish all that they desire.

Some people want more. They want to accomplish a specific goal, expand their business or market, attain financial security, create more balance or fulfillment within their current situation or simply create more free time.

Others want less. They crave less pressure, stress, financial burdens, obligations and clutter in their homes, offices, lives and minds.

Wasn’t it Confucius that said, "If we do not change direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed"? It is too easy for us to continue on our current track, tolerating the little and big obstacles that cross our path each week to prevent us from envisioning this larger picture.

We go to seminars or read motivational books and, for a brief moment, our bigger game visions are crystal clear. We can see, feel and almost touch them. Then, the days turn into weeks and then months and our plans and goals are lost amongst our every day commitments.

Enter coaching. Not to be confused with athletic coaching which has received more than one bad rap over the years, your personal coach will not send you to the locker rooms if you miss the basket. She/he will assist you in looking for the learning in the missed shot and help you create an action plan to make it next time, and the time after that.

A coach will help you keep the focus. Imagine having a person in your life to keep that vision for you, to ask you the tough questions and provide you with absolute truth in return. To work with you on a consistent, supportive, nonjudgmental basis to break through your self limiting conversations and behavior. To keep you in a bigger game.

Having been a student of the human mind for 20 years I have sadly observed more individuals than I can count allow small thinking, small games, self-sabotaging behavior and self imposed blocks keep them from the success that they so desperately desire and deserve.

Perhaps the time has come for each of us to take a closer look at our bigger game, what it is that we truly want for ourselves and for our businesses. The world is changing around us and we can either change along with it and continue to grow bigger and bigger, or "…end up where we are headed’.

A personal coach may just be our best investment to assure our participation in the bigger game that we seek. How big do you want your game to be?

(Ann Golden Eglé, owner of GOLDEN VISIONS SUCCESS COACHING, is an accredited personal and professional coach providing, service to clients throughout the US and Canada. She can be reached at 541-385-8887 or [email protected] and offers a free weekly coaching "Thought of the Week" via e-mail and a free initial consultation.)

Reprinted with permission from Cascade Business News, March 1999