2009 June

If you are a part-time life coach, or coaching full-time there are certain books you need to have on hand, or at least read. Jim Rohn said,

The millionaire says to a thousand people, “I read this book and it started me on the road to wealth.” Guess how many go out and get the book? Very few. Isn’t that incredible? Why wouldn’t everyone go out and get the book?

Books are tools we can choose to use or not. Most life coaches want to be successful, few are willing to do what it takes to be successful. While I won’t tell you there are a lot of Coaching books that are great I will tell you these five make up the core of any coaches library.

You also know if you have read this blog for long I am disgusted with the life coach training business. Every blog and website is dedicated to nothing more than getting money into the hands of a few people who take your money to tell you how to do something you know how to do already, LISTEN TO PEOPLE. These books will also keep a few thousand dollars in your pocket instead of in the hands of some trainer you don’t need.

Total Life Coaching This book is packed with great questions to ask clients and yourself. If you are looking for a starter in a specific area with a client this book probably has what you need.

Four Steps To Building A Profitable Coaching Practice If you are not a marketing guru this is the book for you. It will teach you how to market and sell your coaching practice.

The Coaching Starter Kit This book is Invaluable. If you don’t buy any other coaching book, buy this one. It is packed with forms and step-by-step pages to walk you through starting your business.

Multiple Streams of IncomeWhile I have taken Robert Allen’s book with a grain of sand, Multiple Streams of Income is what you need. I’m pretty sure you can get this at your local library because it has been out for a while. But if you are like me and write all over a book when you read it then pick up a copy.

How to Write & Sell Simple Information for Fun and Profit While Bly’s book is good it is not the be all end all to writing content to sell. Reading Copyblogger and Problogger will get you pretty far for free online. You have to learn how to write and publish articles and e-books from somewhere. I use Scribe for WordPress on my blogs to help get the content right for search engines. Again there are a lot of other things out there. Find what works for you and don’t quit your day job until you are making money.

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Every few months WordPress.com has a featured article that extols the reasons why a person is leaving the Christian faith and why he or she is now an atheist. It is not WordPress.com that is featuring these articles, it is just the amount of hits these articles get that puts them on the front page of WordPress.com. I read these articles and become somewhat disappointed thinking about the view of Christianity this person has seen. But it is the view of American Christianity that most people have. We Christians are self-centered, money hungry, two-faced, homophobes, that are trying to force everyone that disagrees with us to bow to our wishes. Look at the treatment of Liberty University over pulling the liberty name off of the Democrat’s Student Club. We are made to look bad even when we stand up for what we believe, so when we do slip people pile on like an elephant herd on the last peanut.

In John chapter 16 Jesus says, “All this I have told you so that you will not go astray.”

When I read this it helped me realize that some people will walk away. They will walk away from Christianity because life happens, or because they have found many reasons to not believe in the God of the bible. Lets face it, there are reasons given daily on the TV or in new books or every Easter and Christmas in special segment that magazines run. If you look you can find a reason almost daily to stop believing because the enlightened do not believe in God, and mainly the God of the bible. In the parable of the sower Jesus calls this cares. The cares of the world just became so great that the person walks away from their faith.

So how do we overcome this?

The main thing is to stop focusing on the negative. Yes you should check everything you read, and no you should not check your brain at the door. But you should ask yourself how much of this is true and how much is false. Take Creationism for example. You can’t prove creation ex nihilo scientifically, just like abiogenesis can not be proved scientifically. Now can we see that one or the other is true absolutely because we are here. Does your Christian faith rest on whether God spoke and created everything? Absolutely not. Salvation requires you to take Jesus as your savior and give him control of your life, not believe in creationism.

Don’t put the weight of trying to learn every nuance of the Christian faith on yourself. We try so hard to obey when we read, “Always have an answer.” This has made us overly skeptical of people who are not Christians. We project a mean spirit when we act like we have all the answers or try to have all the answers. If someone asks you a question its o.k. to say, “I don’t know.” They want to look smart so let them, and don’t worry about it.

He told them to love each other and serve each other so we need to serve. Do we serve well? No, not all the time but we are human. We are trying to do better serving. But it is ingrained in our culture to be self-serving and expecting the rest of the world to come to us. Missional churches are learning to be the hands and feet of Jesus. Not to get people in the door, but to just serve people and let them know God loves them.

If you are struggling with your faith try focusing on the hungry and hurting. Give back instead of trying to find fault. I am not saying that this is the cure for those who are seriously doubting their faith. I am saying this to those that these few things will begin to help those who are seriously trying to resolve issues.

If you have done your due diligence and really tried to examine the Christian faith. I mean really tried to prove or disprove it, and you decide Christianity is not right for you, that’s o.k. But if you have just heard someone say Christianity ain’t cool and you walk away, then you have done a disservice to what you say you believe and need to really examine what you are saying. Don’t just give up.

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