The 100 day Editorial Content Challenge

As you know, I am a Self Leadership coach. I practiced as an attorney for 18 years in the Atlanta, Georgia area. Over the last three years, I incorporated coaching into my law practice as I became fascinated with patterns of behavior that led to people into the same types of problems repeatedly.

As a result, earlier this year, I decided I would rather help people change the root of their problems rather than put a band aid on the manifestation of the problem.

Now, I am a full time personal coach specializing in the art of change and self leadership in professional development, creativity and cultural identity. I coach my clients to embrace change and create more authenticity in their lives using the principles of positive psychology, self-leadership skills, and the latest research findings in neuroscience.

Melody Campbell, The Small Business Guru is coaching me on being an Internet Super Hero. As I moved my professional presence from a storefront, bricks and mortar law practice to an Internet virtual coaching practice, I have faced challenges that I did not know how to navigate my way around.

She is coaching me live on her radio show every week on how to tap into my client’s minds, develop a powerful presence on the Internet and how develop and grow my virtual coaching practice.

To that end, Melody has challenged me to a 100 day Editorial Content Challenge where I have to produce a written or audio piece for my coaching practice. I was hesitant to do this because of the upcoming holidays. However, it is perfect timing! By the New Year, I will be living my New Year’s resolution. How perfect is that!

Also, if I produce five things in one day, it counts as five days worth of work.

My three coaching areas embracing change and developing self leadership in professional development, creativity and cultural identity. The Editorial Content 100 day challenge includes creating one product a day in any of those areas as follows:

1.     Ezine Article

2.     Blog Entry

3.     Report

4.     Ezine Newsletter

5.     Youtube video

6.     Radio show

7.     Squidoo lens

In addition, each day, I will deliberately convert someone I am following in my social networking circle into more of a personal friend or acquaintance. I will read their blogs, make comments, tell them about this challenge, see how I can support them and solicit a stronger relationship with them. Also, it will be my opportunity to see if they would be a great guest on my radio show.

The challenge started November 21, 2008 and ends on February 28, 2009.

I will post my status on SuccessITV.com, Twitter and Facebook often. I will just give a brief synopsis of what I have done or what challenges I am facing. I am asking you to help me be accountable and give me support. Check in on me and see how I am doing. Also, please feel free to introduce me to people you know so that I can have a stronger connection with them as part of my social network.

My success is your success. I encourage you to read this and follow me for this 100 day challenge and learn from it and refer others so they can learn from it. However, if you can, please join me on this challenge. Tell others about it. Tell new coaches about it and let us get to know each other and support each other during this time.

By the end of this challenge, I will have started my radio show, finished up my blog that is now in progress, produced at least 100 pieces of content that are blog posts, articles, reports, videos or audios that directly benefit others. How great is that! I will feel masterful and deliberate about my Internet presence and I will be seeing the cash flow results as a result of my efforts.

Here is to our collective success!

Happily,

Iyabo

On Death and Dying, again!

My husband had recently visited his parents in Nigeria

Initially when my husband decided to take the trip, I was very upset about it because it was the worst possible timing for both of us. I had just gone through the most challenging two weeks of my entire life. However, he had a very strong urge to go and when he went, I felt abandoned. I really felt inconsolable especially when the trip unexpected and unilaterally extended from six days to three weeks. I was facing a lot of personal challenges at the time and this was only our second separation in eight years.

My coach asked me to consider treating the trip as if it was the best decision my husband had ever made. It was painful. I did not want to give up being upset about the trip but I made a decision to be OK about his trip. Once I got a peace about the trip, I was able to let it go in my mind and decided that it was really important to bless his trip so that he could be focused on being with his family. So I wrote him a wonderful love letter before he left and he got to read this on the trip and it eased his mind as he figured out that I had made peace with his trip. Of course this was before he extended his trip.

I realized that I missed him so much. It was unbelievable how much I missed him. I missed watching our TV shows together. I missed eating together and just catching up with each other. The bed sure felt lonely.

Previously, I had a cat and she died earlier this year. Boy, I missed my cat. I got her when I was still single and she was my housemate. While my husband was away, I needed my housemate. I missed Kitty so much it was unbearable.

I tried to console myself by opening all the windows and getting a lot of fresh air. But, it did not help. I could not focus. I was totally unproductive. Boy, talk about the grand slam of pity parties!

Finally, I realized that a lot of sadness was coming up for me and being alone was giving space to those feelings. I missed my parents a lot. As I grieved losses and worked through the sadness of feeling abandoned and alone, I had an epiphany.

I realized that I had abandoned myself! No one can abandon me if I am here for me! I realized that I was not taking responsibility for my life and I was looking to my husband to fulfill certain emotional needs that only I could fulfill. Friends and loved ones were calling me during this time to check on me and I would not return any phone calls. That is the very definition of abandoning oneself.

It was liberating as I realized that it was a good thing to be alone. It was a good thing to miss him; after all, he is my husband. I hope I missed the man that I have lived with for almost eight years. Then I was able to look forward to his return, with pure joy and not from a place of trying to hold him accountable for my bad feelings about his trip.

I promised myself that I would not let him know how upset I was until about two weeks later. For the first time in my life, I shut up! Amazing and miraculous!

O boy, now the story takes a totally different twist.

He returned from his trip a Sunday evening and on Wednesday morning, three days later, at about 4 am, we got a phone call saying that his mom had died. He spent over two weeks with her and she was healthy and well. There was no indication whatsoever that this was going to happen. We were shocked and heartbroken.

I was stunned that I had not wanted him to go on this trip and how would I have felt if he did not go and things turned out this way? I was so relieved that he went on this trip. I was on my knees thanking God that he took the trip in spite of my lack of support about it. I felt so bad that I did not go on the trip as I did not get to see her one last time.

It brought up for me incredible grief at the loss of my own parents. Both my parents have passed away and this is the first parent on my husband’s side of the family to make that transition. She was only sixty two which I consider very young.

I was so grateful that I had worked through my own issues when this happened. I was able to see a bird’s eye view of the whole situation and view the end from the beginning. I saw how there was a big touch of Divinity on this whole situation.

I started to view my upset when he was away as possibly me grieving what was going to come up without knowing what was going to happen. I was now in a space to reciprocate back to my husband what he gave me when my father first passed away and a couple of years later, when my mother made her own transition. My husband was by my side each time and was a rock of comfort and solace. In fact, my mother was sick and in the hospital when she died. My husband was the only one in the room with her when she took her last breath. I have renewed gratitude for having that support as I grieved the loss of those I had known for every day of my entire life.

Femi and I are still working through all the feelings about the loss of his mother. She was a caring person who fiercely loved her children and doted on her grandchildren, bathing them daily when she was with them. We are both grateful that he spent quality time with her recently.

What a wise investment of resources, energy and time that he made in going to see his family half way across the world when he did! My coach was absolutely right! Femi going home was the best possible decision that he could have made at the time he made it. Phew!

We all have situations going on in our lives that we do not feel good about right now. What would happen if you ask yourself, “This does not feel good right now but what if this is the best thing that ever happened to me?”

I consider this a powerful self-leadership tool.

Obama wins!

This is a longer post that combines my thoughts that are spread out on several of my posts.

I stayed up on November 4th counting electoral votes as I enjoyed basking in the moment of Obama’s win. Truly, I am happy. I feel a kinship with him on many levels.

My mother was a white American. Her mother was Irish American and her father was Jewish originally from Poland. She met my Nigerian father while he was at Columbia University in New York and she ended up moving to Nigeria where she lived for 38 years. The bi-racial component is one point of  resonance for me when I consider our new president elect.

I moved to the US when I was sixteen. I relate with many people of many different races and nationalities. I have relationships in many corners of the world and I am looking to establishing even more. One of the things I have written about is the fact that I am a Third Culture Kid. Being multiracial and living in different cultures growing up as a child makes me a Third Culture Kid.

I find the conversation about Obama and race to be very interesting because I do not think he sees himself as others see him. In my opinion, A Black man did not win the election. He is multi-racial! Why are we trying to define who he is? He gets to define who he is. I have never really heard him discuss his person definition of his race extensively. I think it would upset other people if they realized that he may not see his race through the same lens as they do. He may actually consider himself half white and half African – a new spin on the term “African-American.”

One thing we have underestimated in this electoral race is the subject of resonance. Resonance elected Obama – not race. He resonates with many white Americans, because culturally, he has a significant white component to his identity. He resonates with young people. He relates to African Americans. He resonates with thinking people. As he kisses his wife and kids while on camera, he resonates to family people. Most of all, he resonates with people who are sick and tired of living in a box. He resonates with people who want to live outside the box! Because he is a Third Culture Kid (TCK) he has this innate ability to resonate with so many people on so many levels.

He may be married to an African American but he has not always being fully immersed into the African American culture.  We define him as African American but that term does not quantify his personal multicultural, multinational and multiracial being.

As proud as I am about him, I do not want a person in the white house because of their race. I want a person, male, female, black, white, Hispanic, gay, straight or whatever, because of their competency and ability to deliver and make this country the best place on the planet in every way possible. Period. As happy and as proud as I am of him, I voted for him not because of the color of his skin or because I resonated with his family background but because of his competency.

I was really shocked to find out that so many people are reacting in extremely negative ways about our new president elect. There are a lot of viral messages on Facebook and various places on the Internet that are fully expressive of very base forms of prejudice. This is particularly shocking to me.

I have never really felt that I was a victim of prejudice. I have lived in the United States for almost 30 years and I have always enjoyed a very arms length relationship with racial prejudice.  I was never conditioned to be very aware of it and its negative impact because my parents firmly believed in charting out your life on your terms. Also, frankly, I think growing up in a different part of the world made a big difference for me.Americans have a tendency to define almost everything from a race perspective.

I have had a pretty good life. I meet many white Americans in my daily life and I cannot say that I have had any major negative experiences in my interactions with white Americans.  This is not to say that I have not observed racism, but I was never affected negatively by it.

I once worked at a law firm where a long standing 90 year old white male client came in and needed some work done. He was an uneducated white male originally from rural Georgia. He was introduced to me and he said that he did not want to work with a “n…..” Yes, the really negative word. I was so amused how easily that word rolled off his tongue. Obviously, it was just a descriptive term for him. There was no emotion behind his words. That was the first time someone had used that word to describe me to my face.

I assured him that he should trust my boss’s judgment and allow me to do the work and if I did not do a good job, he would not have to pay. I went on and prepared his will and we got to know each other. I truly was not offended. I just saw him as someone that was conditioned to think the way he did. He was impressed with my work and gave me more work to do for him. I must say, as I think back to my interaction with him. He may have appeared to be prejudiced based on his ignorance but he was not an angry person and that may be why I had an easy relationship with him.

It turns out we lived near each other and a couple of years later as I drove past his house I saw a lot of cars there and I could tell something was wrong. I stopped and went into the house where everyone immediately stopped and stared at me. You could hear a pin drop. I asked for him and I was told he was in the bathroom. Someone asked me who I was and I said I was his lawyer. They all looked surprised, yet relieved. When my client came out of the bathroom, he smiled and was so happy to see me. He told me his wife had died and I gave him a big hug. I fussed over him as I asked if he had been taking his medication and was he feeling OK. He introduced me to everyone and eventually, a few of the people I met that day became my clients. I sat down and shared a meal with him and his family and guess what, they were just ordinary people, sad that they lost the family matriarch, worried about their children and the economy and wanting to live good lives.

To this moment, I am certain several people in that room were members of the KKK or such similar group. I could sense it, yet I never sensed I was in danger.

That episode taught me that prejudice is learned and is a defense mechanism to protect what you know and what serves you. It is a refection of a person’s lack of imagination and adventure. But the saddest part is just seeing the person’s energy as that of fear of loss of everything that has defined them. It truly is sad. From here, I feel great compassion and empathy for those who use racism and prejudice and hatred as a tool of defense and destruction. I can certainly relate to the feeling of loss, fear and mourning of an old friend – something that has defined you for so long.

They are missing out on so much of their lives.

You see, the issue is not race, religion or politics. Those are just smokescreens. The issue is what you believe defines you. Your definition of yourself cannot come from what other people say about you. Your definition of yourself has to come from the place of believeing that you belong on this planet; it is your right to be here, at this time, in this space. You belong.  Once your belief system takes root in this belief system, and you realize that everyone else also has that right, then you can begin to carve out your life from a place of strength and not a place of fear.

Imagine you wake up tomorrow morning and the world has changed: You may be white and99% of the rest of the population is black, Hispanic or what ever you do not like. You are still entitled to your space on this planet. You are still entitled to be as prosperous as your belief system allows. You are still entitled to a political voice with your vote if you live in this country. So is everyone else.

The perceived shift of power in the white house does not increase or decrease any other person’s ability or personal power. I do not feel powerless with George W. Bush in the white house because he is a white male from the South! Not one day over the last eight years did that thought cross my mind. I will not feel more powerful as a person because President-Elect Barack Obama will be in the White House. My personal power does not stem from who is in the white house. It stems from the fact that I am here on this planet and it is my right to create my life and live it out from a personally powerful place. I may feel more powerful when he is in the white house because I feel confident of the leadership of this country, but ultimately, my power comes from me.

I do not believe that John McCain has lost any power whatsoever in his life by not winning the election. Instead, he has gained power. Prior to this race, he had never been the nominee for the Republican ticket before in his life. Obviously that became something very important for him. Today, we know that he has the support of 48% of the voting public. That is not a small matter. How can he continue to make himself relevant to the country, even the world? He is obviously still a valuable assett to the world. Think Al Gore!

Now, yes, the President and his decisions, actions and in-actions, do impact our daily lives and we are all feeling it, especially in the economy. But whether I have a million dollars in the bank or five dollars in the bank, my power comes from me, not my money. Now, it feels better to have a million dollars in the bank. I may feel powerless when I only have five dollars in the bank but the source of my power does not come from a green piece of paper that says $5 or $1 million. It comes from me.

America, can we please dig in deep and find our individual power and from that place, support our national leadership? Please.  Don’t support his race, don’t support his international background, don’t support the fact that he is democratic. Support the fact that he is our leader and therefore he has a responsibility to us. Our responsibility is to draw on our personal power and stop making him a scapegoat of our feelings of powerlessness.

To write this post, I sat back with a desire to perceive Obama’s energy. I asked myself, what is the most important thing to me about Barack Obama?  I realized that I admire his focus. He has been very focused throughout his campaign. I also sensed that he keeps his ego controlled or has a very little one.  When I say focused, I mean he is pro his agenda which was he did not created as an anti agenda of the status quo. So during the debates, when McCain would try to push his buttons, I never saw him angry or reactionary. Some say he was vibing cool hand Luke. I say he was focused on what he wants – A better America.