marilynatkinson

In it, an older spinster confronts an aging, lonely bachelor about the possibility of raising the standards of life much higher, beyond loneliness habits, and striking out past all fear into the territory of real love! The song will sing in your brain for weeks and rightfully so, because our deeper knowing system really understands this clear metaphor well.

Methinks this song cuts far too close to the truth for those of us (all of us) facing the current financial crisis (or any other crises of faith). All of us need to hear the inner challenge to keep raising our eyes to the call of love. How many coaching newsletters from how many coaching schools have fluttered electronically past my eyes in the last month with the aim of counselling and consoling the fearful?

Meanwhile the real call, mother earth’s call and humanity’s call is a wake-up call! “Take a Chance on Me!” What comfort zones are we willing to move past in the name of real love? What gifts and legacies are we willing to give for our children and their future? “Take a Chance on Me” calls the song! What does Love want from you now, at this point in life?

What boldness now, as the planet creaks with seven billion of us? What vision, now, while so many quake in their boots about job challenges and the lowering of the income level?

And so my friends I invite you and challenge you to really take a real chance this year: A chance to let your vision free! What do you want to do with this one wild and wonderful life? Move beyond fear of dreaming! A chance to let your heart free! What small sacrifices in comfort could allow you to expand your range of inner freedom and truth?

Move beyond all victim identification and meet the heart’s message!

A chance to let your voice free! What skills as a coach do you sit on for fear of upsetting people? Move beyond fear of conflict! Old mother earth offers her best. Life dazzles us with amazing opportunities. What purpose truly lights up your inner vision?

What do you truly want to take a chance on?

Let 2009 be the year that you move fearlessly towards the call of your inner life. In Rumi’s words: “Even if you have broken your inner vow once or a thousand times, come yet again come!

Take a wonderful chance on love’s purpose in 2009!

Marilyn Atkinson

President,

Erickson International

We may laugh at the sameness, but indeed the tree of life is a world symbol for regeneration and peace... what we are all striving for! Similarly, I continually notice the kindness of common people from helpful taxi drivers to waitresses, to hotel maids all wanting to add their piece to a world that works.As Milton says, who we are from the deepest level is 99.9% aiming towards goodness or we would all be dead!!

Let us take this season as a time to really feel our deep principles and values and as we do so to take time for deep gratitude and real compassion to those we are with. If any people in the world are lucky it is us coaches:

• First our skills are so wanted and our capacity to make a difference is so real.

• Second, no matter what stage of business development you are at personally, your work will continue to grow if you simply focus and take your next step. Coaching is taking root everywhere.

• Thirdly, you are learning the most cutting edge coaching program of our time, giving you strong and effective tools for every situation. Even in these difficult times we are blessed.

Solution Focused Coaching is gradually spreading out, country by country, and this provides a powerful force for stability and development on the planet, and –dare I say it in these wild times- a force for simple kindness! To practise this kindness requires living our vision in the most fundamental way. Our light is needed. Our willingness to add humor and trust and love is needed.

Let us support the development of coaching values in all areas of work, play, family and personal relationship. The world needs our wisdom and professionalism. In our clarity about the quality of our work and the principles we stand for our future planet is born. No matter the newspapers and the news... we are making a true difference every time we live..and coach... from our inner wisdom. Remember that!

The Spirit of Christmas is indeed the Spirit of Coaching. Use this time to re-energize, re- focus and to celebrate. Allow your light to be a lamp for all. Thank you for being you!

Marilyn Atkinson

President,

Erickson International

It is a linking machine constantly finding new pathways to experience its own natural wholeness and integrity. It provides an axion-neuron linkage system like a river of multiple channels that connect . We experience moving down stream after stream.

What is the Mind?

It is an ever expanding circle of awareness. It is like the water in the stream, the natural wholeness present in everything.

To you this system may at first seem singular. My mind! You are experiencing “ Me Q” the private and personal realm of awareness! Wonderful! Here I am, full of awareness, standing in these shoes!

With coaching you begin to practise a new form of intelligence. Your mind becomes an easy double system...” We Q”. With coaching, one questions and the other answers. One probes, and one listens inwardly. One plays back a refrain and the other finds the emergent melody. This small duet becomes a well practised channel of awareness.

With a team coach this system expands out further.... We experience orchestral awareness. A strong team in action calls their practise: ”dialogue”. Oh, the joy of dialogue! The expanding reach of intelligence through a well practised team creates breathtaking symmetry, and the integrity of the process becomes visible to all who partake.

People love their team like they love their mother. And how else can this reach of the mind be experienced?

We can practise morphogenetic mind. Now this expansion is also a practise.... one that is better known than you think.

It means that you step into the shoes of multiple team players who have practised before, but who may not be physically present now, including your former self.

We may call this many things: Life is improvisation! If one steps into the shoes of Rumi, we may call this poetry. If one steps into the shoes of Ghandi we may call this oratory. If one steps in the shoes of St Francis we may call this compassion.

The neurons and axions connect, the actions get memorized, the patterns become morphogenetic forms, and your blessing moves out into the gladdened universe. We all experience the inner wholeness!

Marilyn Atkinson Ph D

This famous monk practiced this transmutation all his life. Near the end of his life he called his students to him and told them with tears in his eyes that he had a dream that he would be reborn in the Buddhist heaven realms. He was very disappointed that he would not be born in a hell realm where he could really assist people, and asked his students to pray that he would be reborn in the hell realms where he could help people.

This story has become an anecdote about how surprising peoples' models of the world can be, but it is very telling in terms of how we can relax in life and really develop happiness moment by moment no matter what occurs.

With the solution focused process as our framework for alchemy we move beyond all types of contextual disappointment. Solution Focused Alchemy means that every "realm" we enter becomes "fine" simply because we actively transmute it to "fine"! This world in all its forms, heaven or hell, becomes a fine place to be!

Notice that every realm in life can either be experienced as a heaven realm or a hell realm. Watch people around you. Some are clearly living in a self-imposed purgatory. Some people live joyfully so that they float lightly through life. Even physical pain touches them lightly. Others get to walk through the quicksand of life with lead boots on. In fact there are no "realms" out there! Each realm is within us. It is all process. There is no content. We can be transformers anywhere.

Heaven means that we are light breathers; that we choose to actively heal those we connect with through solution focused words and responses to them. In this way we give them no power to harm us, no matter what they do. Thus, we cannot find ourselves in the hell realms. We are also, then, Alchemists. Every realm we enter becomes like Gold because we actively transmute it. Solution Focused practice means we can be active light producers. A light producer is not a fluffy optimist but an active realist producing results through action. A light producer is an active participant, participating fully in the results of people around them.

We can actively forgive others and free ourselves from all kinds of disappointments. How can we be harmed by life, whatever the scenarios we live inside, if this is our reality?
Marilyn Atkinson Ph D

We all have indelible moments, memorable occasions that live in our inner vision for a life time. These memories are enormously important to the warmth and camaraderie we show each other along the journey.

I invite you to visualize a misty sunrise on the rocky coast of the Pacific Ocean. See me, Marilyn Atkinson, waking, stretching and folding her sleeping bag to start the day. I am on the third wonderful day of solo hiking along the Pacific Coast and I have several more days of hiking to complete my journey on the rugged trail.

Down the bay from where I had camped the night, I notice that an elderly Native American fisherman has pulled up a small white fishing boat and has a fire going on the beach. The smell of coffee wafts in my direction, and, when he sees me approach the beach, he holds up a cup and beckons me over. Without a word he hands me the cup of coffee.

Grateful for the hot drink on this wet morning, I sit and sip quietly while he kneels beside the fire and smokes. Finally he stands up and points to the native village across the bay and says, "I am going there, do you want a ride?"

Realizing that this would put me half a day closer to a delightful part of my journey, I agree, and we get into the boat. Moving out slowly into the bay he points to the mountains now clearly in view. On the top of each of seven high hills around the bay, he draws my attention to seven bald eagles; each perched on a bare branch of the highest tree of each hill.

I am quite amazed to see them there, like seven large guardians of the mountains themselves. "They are all watching us," he says.

Noticing my strong interest he cautions to me to "sit and don't move. Watch this," he says, and sticks his hand into a large box of freshly caught fish. He chooses a big red snapper and weighs it in his hands. Then he stands up, holds the fish high, and waves it at the nearest eagle over 2000 yards away.

He then rotates his arm clockwise 3 times and tosses the fish high in the air, so that it lands with a smacking sound in the water near the boat. As soon as the fish hits the water, the eagle quickly launches off of his tree branch. With smooth, strong wing strokes, he flies down toward us as swiftly as an arrow.

I am amazed at the speed of the giant bird. I am in awe of its ten foot wingspan. As I watch, it quickly moves close to us and to the fish. In a second it extends its claws like landing gear, and quickly spreads its talons wide. In one smooth, deathly silent swoop it dives and picks up the large fish floating just below the water's surface. It lifts its prize high in the air and speeds back to its tree top perch.

I am speechless. The sight now lives in my memory: the proud eyes, the shining wings, the ballet of motion; a sight never to be forgotten.

The old man laughs at my amazement. "Something to see eh?" he says. Five minutes later, quietly, as if to himself, he repeats it again under his breath: "Yes. Really something to see."

Nothing more needed to be said as we crossed the bay.

Marilyn Atkinson Ph.D.