Life Coaching with Melody

Posted December 30th, 2021 by Melody Taylor-Fliege & filed under Coffeeshop Coaching.

Find answers, take actions, & get results – Coffeeshop Coaching!

Join me online via-ZOOM for my next Virtual Coffeeshop Group Coaching! It’s free! You help choose the topic and direct the group discussion by answering a few questions when you register. To register, click this link: 09 January 2022

Be prepared to share something you discover from the questions you answer when you register, and ask more questions to the group via chat during the ZOOM- Coffeeshop Coaching.
Think about what you would like to hold yourself accountable for, and your possible next step. A coaching journal is a great way to create accountability and track your success!
Open your mind and together let’s uncover new perspectives and valuable takeaway tools for your life!

Virtual Coffeeshop coaching is confidential while using a more relaxed and informal platform that being part of an online coaching group can provide, and can be done from the comfort of your home, no need to travel! We meet online via ZOOM over a cup of coffee, tea, or whatever is appropriate for your time zone. Every participant and Coach Melody will join from their respective current global locations which gives the event a very international touch. Diversity is an added twist of value as each of the international participants contribute from their specific approaches adding a variety of new perspectives. Perspectives are valuable in the coaching process for clarity, opening up and leaning into what’s new in any change process. This gives a great latitude in creating tools for change. These group coaching’s usually last 90 minutes, and they are FREE!

If you are struggling with big changes in your life, need to make a decision, or just need to be heard, coffeeshop coaching can be the perfect platform for you. Coaching is a productive relationship enabling YOU to:

Creatively explore solutions
Prevent self-sabotage
Take actions that move YOU forward
Achieve YOUR goals
Attain clarity in what YOU want

Life is meant for awesome adventures, good friends, great coaches, and LOTS of coffee!
Melody Taylor-Fliege

NOTE: If the link above does not work, copy and paste this link directly into your browser https://lifecoachingwithmelodyllc.as.me/coffeeshop-coaching-free-virtual-group or go directly to the booking page on my website and click on the Free Virtual Coffeeshop Group Coaching appointment. To sign up follow these steps: 1) click the registration link, 2) click the orange set time zone button, 3) choose date, see the time, and click continue, 4) answer a few questions, 5) click the orange complete appointment button, 6) then you will see a confirmation page and receive an email with the ZOOM link, meeting ID, and password to be used when you join the meeting on Sunday.

Posted December 11th, 2021 by Melody Taylor-Fliege & filed under #COVID19, Holidays.

One of the greatest gifts this part of the year offers is celebrating all that was in the past year and making way for new things in the new year. The COVID-19 pandemic, with so much death, has also created a pause and reset many structures in our lives.

Tip 1: Light at the end of the tunnel.

Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel can make people restless and impatient about finally reaching the light. This can lead to picking up an increased pace forward, exhaustion, overextension of energies. Remind yourself, although it looks like the light at the end of the tunnel is very close, the last chapter of this pandemic is not yet written, and no one knows exactly when we will be out of the tunnel. Enjoy the positive feeling of welcoming that there will be an end while at the same time accepting that we are still in the pandemic and not sure how long we will have to endure.

Tip 2: Treat yourself and others gentle.

For many of us, this has been a rough year. Slowing down this festive season, reaching out for companionship and even assistance to those who need it can help us preserve our sanity and health.

Tip 3: Accept the Offer of Alternatives.

COVID-19 deprived you of things you loved, your favorite sports activity, concerts, parties, and other activities that we usually utilize to add energy and spice to our lives. COVID-19 has taken away many of these activities, demanding social distancing, so instead of complaining about what you cannot change, look at the alternatives that open for yourself. There are many activities or even restful inactivity, which we have neglected over our 24/7 lifestyles. But also, for those who crave activity, you find plenty of inspiration on the internet in the form of work-out videos, do it yourself videos, but also meditation and relaxation, which your body and mind might be craving.

Tip 4: Giving and receiving this holiday season.

Giving out energy and gifts, especially this year, must balance receiving what nourishes us and helps us rejuvenate after the holidays. Even the social distancing twist of this holiday season does not mean stopping all tradition rather innovating, especially now. Spending time with loved ones or people that matter most during these festive times may need to be on the phone or online via your favorite platform. It’s just as important as healthy eating habits and plenty of rest during any holiday season. COVID-19 self-isolation offers the opportunity to indulge in what you love, get caught-up, organized, and create holiday connections like never before.

Posted December 5th, 2021 by Melody Taylor-Fliege & filed under Coffeeshop Coaching.

Today’s Takeaway from Free Virtual Coffeeshop Group Coaching – via ZOOM – 05 December 2021 is:

“The story you tell about yourself is ultimately who you become. Change your story and you change your destiny.”
David Bayer

In today’s coffeeshop coaching, we addressed the challenge of finding our center in difficult situations and creating balance in accessing our strength without striving for unachievable perfection.

It is helpful to find out who we are in each challenging situation. Ask yourself, why is this situation happening to you? What can you learn from this situation? How can you develop approaches? How can you learn how to accept and forgive yourself? All of this in order to get through the situation stronger and be able to master the next challenges better. Simply being aware of ourselves within a certain situation can enable us to live with it, making it through and coming out stronger on the other side.

COVID has taught us how quickly things can change as the numbers rise yet again against another mutation. Change is almost always uncomfortable and sometimes quite painful, especially when it comes extremely fast. How can you be sure you are choosing change over avoidance or that you are not simply on a distracting tangent? It’s not always so evident in the day-to-day as when we look back and see where the smaller steps created something more extensive. Small steps, patience, and courage are required as we learn to observe our thoughts and feelings but not be ruled by them in the face of our fears and take actions that shape our lives in the direction we choose.

Who are you in the story you are writing?
Looking back years from now, who do you want to be in your own story?

Posted December 3rd, 2021 by Melody Taylor-Fliege & filed under Coffeeshop Coaching.

Find answers, take actions, & get results – Coffeeshop Coaching!

Join me online via-ZOOM for my next Virtual Coffeeshop Group Coaching! It’s free! You help choose the topic and direct the group discussion by answering a few questions when you register. To register, click this link: 05 December 2021

Be prepared to share something you discover from the questions you answer when you register, and ask more questions to the group via chat during the ZOOM- Coffeeshop Coaching.
Think about what you would like to hold yourself accountable for, and your possible next step. A coaching journal is a great way to create accountability and track your success!
Open your mind and together let’s uncover new perspectives and valuable takeaway tools for your life!

Virtual Coffeeshop coaching is confidential while using a more relaxed and informal platform that being part of an online coaching group can provide, and can be done from the comfort of your home, no need to travel! We meet online via ZOOM over a cup of coffee, tea, or whatever is appropriate for your time zone. Every participant and Coach Melody will join from their respective current global locations which gives the event a very international touch. Diversity is an added twist of value as each of the international participants contribute from their specific approaches adding a variety of new perspectives. Perspectives are valuable in the coaching process for clarity, opening up and leaning into what’s new in any change process. This gives a great latitude in creating tools for change. These group coachings usually last 90 minutes, and they are FREE!

If you are struggling with big changes in your life, need to make a decision, or just need to be heard, coffeeshop coaching can be the perfect platform for you. Coaching is a productive relationship enabling YOU to:

Creatively explore solutions
Prevent self-sabotage
Take actions that move YOU forward
Achieve YOUR goals
Attain clarity in what YOU want

Life is meant for awesome adventures, good friends, great coaches, and LOTS of coffee!
Melody Taylor-Fliege

NOTE: If the link above does not work, copy and paste this link directly into your browser https://lifecoachingwithmelodyllc.as.me/coffeeshop-coaching-free-virtual-group or go directly to the booking page on my website and click on the Free Virtual Coffeeshop Group Coaching appointment. To sign up follow these steps: 1) click the registration link, 2) click the orange set time zone button, 3) choose date, see the time, and click continue, 4) answer a few questions, 5) click the orange complete appointment button, 6) then you will see a confirmation page and receive an email with the ZOOM link, meeting ID, and password to be used when you join the meeting on Sunday.

Posted December 1st, 2021 by Melody Taylor-Fliege & filed under Celebration.

“Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.”
Henry Ford

The cyclical nature of our lives offers many opportunities to celebrate – some bigger than others. Waking up each day full of celebration for the quiet, still, rest we wake from and celebrating the unwritten day before us. Maybe you will choose to spend some time meditating on how to manifest the dreams and thoughts in your head into physical reality. Or perhaps you create a personal list of the things that matter most to consciously celebrate and express appreciation for the many blessings on your list.

As a big event such as the end of the year or holiday, even a birthday gets closer, it can stir up a host of mixed emotions. We can forget that celebrating our lives with the people we care about is more important than the details, and this celebration can happen continuously. Details around the event, such as gifts, rituals, or timetables, can cause us to create unrealistic expectations from ourselves or others. These details can trigger negative emotions of past disappointments in ourselves and others that somehow dismantle our hope. No matter our expectations or emotions, the negativity is likely caused by an unrealistic sense of the upcoming celebratory event. Still, no matter our feelings or expectations, we can get so much more out of the upcoming event when we open up to the spirit of the celebration with gratitude. Using gratitude as an inward tool of reflecting over the more heartfelt significance of celebration events ignites true joy. Gratitude combined with creativity in the perspectives we use to look at a single event or our whole life helps extend loving and kind energy to all we encounter. This kind of spirit also allows us to more truly celebrate and continuously offer some of our greatest gifts like love, compassion, acceptance, understanding, and joy to everyone we encounter—especially the ones we care about most.

Posted November 14th, 2021 by Melody Taylor-Fliege & filed under #COVID19, Relationships.

The COVID-19 crisis led to a situation, in which many of us found ourselves held up with a partner, who we normally hardly get to see. Then we shared living quarters, work-space kitchen 24/7, this is still the case for some. Crisis like this can be stressful for a relationship and it can also create time and space for long overdue relationship maintenance. Productive partnerships are not only limited to romantic relationships, but also professional business colleges, joint causes; any time you join with another person or people a partnership is formed. The thing I love about this topic is how it relates to groups and team coaching which is all about the united purpose, creating value for all stakeholders, outside-in and future-back.

Here is a few tips and strategies of how to co-create, embrace, and expand partnerships to be more productive! And if you have any ideas or suggestions about productive partnerships, please share them by clicking here, or simply go to my blog and comment on one of my blogs around this topic.

Tip 1: Balance is a core ingredient of every relationship.

Do you feel you are contributing more than your partner and expect more from him or her? Do you think you are falling short? The only way to find out if both partners truly are experiencing a balanced relationship is through communication. If you have the feeling of imbalance, you should address it in a frank but loving way. If you feel the topic could be sensitive, create a setting of comfort and trust, and don’t choose a time when one of you is experiencing excessive stress. Sometimes opening to a topic that has been undisturbed but also unsatisfying for too long can lead to a surprising result. You may experience that your partner shares your feelings about the balance in the relationship. You may, however experience, that the perceptions about this topic are very different. In that case, you need to have an open discussion and formulate reasonable and creative solutions. Sometimes the imbalances are based on faulty assumptions about, what the other partner wants, and imbalances can be equalized easily. In other cases, some shortcomings require both sides to make concessions and compromises. However, shouldn’t a functioning relationship be worth trade-offs?

Tip 2: Allow each other to be who you are if you choose to stay together.

Many times, the honeymoon phase of a relationship doesn’t sharpen our senses for imperfections. However, when the newness wears off, we might discover characteristics that aren’t quite as attractive as the traits that let us choose this specific partner in the first place. When this leads to severe irritations, it is time to find out which characteristics on both sides are simply habits that can be changed easily in the interest of the relationship; and which parts are actual components of a personality that demanding change would be expecting from the partner to give up authenticity. Examples of differences would be laziness in the household, which one partner may be willing to modify in the interest of harmony. If, however, a partner who is passionate about traveling or motorbiking is asked to give up those passions to join the other partner in gardening in order to share more hobbies, this might demand something that is incompatible with the unique personality and would create unhealthy results for the relationship. Again, this requires open, loving communication in good faith on both sides. In a functioning relationship, it should be possible to get clarity about habits and actual character traits.

Tip 3: Find the good, increase the positive.

While I am far from denying the value of applying and accepting healthy criticism, any crisis is a time in which I recommend finding the good in what your partner does. Being locked up together is not a good time for “who left the cap off the toothpaste?” discussions. Research shows that couples in stressful situations are getting through the situation better when they have trust that their partner is there for them. This doesn’t mean that you have to solve each other’s problems or even try to do that. The trick is to listen to each other carefully, reflect that you understand, and have mutual empathy. Listening can create enough feelings of trust and faith in each other to turn the pandemic into a time in which your relationship flourishes.

Posted November 7th, 2021 by Melody Taylor-Fliege & filed under Coffeeshop Coaching.

Today’s Takeaway from Free Virtual Coffeeshop Group Coaching – via ZOOM – 07 November 2021 is:

“Every weakness contains within itself a strength.”
Shusaku Endo

Today’s coffeeshop coaching showed how our strengths often reveal themselves through our worries, insecurities, and weaknesses, especially when we feel safe enough to express inner truths. There is something about saying things aloud that enables us to hear something new or finally make sense of an old message. Worrying about something we feel as our weakness can block us from seeing how much of strength it is. The truth is that weakness is almost always the shadow side of strength. Too much of anything becomes a bad thing. Understanding strengths requires experiencing weaknesses. Weakness is where the struggle is that makes us reach for change. Change is almost never a smooth process. It’s usually more of an obstacle course that requires us to deal with things in an original way, with creativity and an open mind. You may not be giving yourself enough credit; push forward with kindness and more love.

If you look at three of your strengths, what do you notice about how they may have been created?

Posted November 3rd, 2021 by Melody Taylor-Fliege & filed under Coffeeshop Coaching.

Find answers, take actions, & get results – Coffeeshop Coaching!

Join me online via-ZOOM for my next Virtual Coffeeshop Group Coaching! It’s free! You help choose the topic and direct the group discussion by answering a few questions when you register. To register, click this link: 07 November 2021

Be prepared to share something you discover from the questions you answer when you register, and ask more questions to the group via chat during the ZOOM- Coffeeshop Coaching.
Think about what you would like to hold yourself accountable for, and your possible next step. A coaching journal is a great way to create accountability and track your success!
Open your mind and together let’s uncover new perspectives and valuable takeaway tools for your life!

Virtual Coffeeshop coaching is confidential while using a more relaxed and informal platform that being part of an online coaching group can provide, and can be done from the comfort of your home, no need to travel! We meet online via ZOOM over a cup of coffee, tea, or whatever is appropriate for your time zone. Every participant and Coach Melody will join from their respective current global locations which gives the event a very international touch. Diversity is an added twist of value as each of the international participants contribute from their specific approaches adding a variety of new perspectives. Perspectives are valuable in the coaching process for clarity, opening up and leaning into what’s new in any change process. This gives a great latitude in creating tools for change. These group coachings usually last 90 minutes, and they are FREE!

If you are struggling with big changes in your life, need to make a decision, or just need to be heard, coffeeshop coaching can be the perfect platform for you. Coaching is a productive relationship enabling YOU to:

Creatively explore solutions
Prevent self-sabotage
Take actions that move YOU forward
Achieve YOUR goals
Attain clarity in what YOU want

Life is meant for awesome adventures, good friends, great coaches, and LOTS of coffee!
Melody Taylor-Fliege

NOTE: If the link above does not work, copy and paste this link directly into your browser https://lifecoachingwithmelodyllc.as.me/coffeeshop-coaching-free-virtual-group or go directly to the booking page on my website and click on the Free Virtual Coffeeshop Group Coaching appointment. To sign up follow these steps: 1) click the registration link, 2) click the orange set time zone button, 3) choose date, see the time, and click continue, 4) answer a few questions, 5) click the orange complete appointment button, 6) then you will see a confirmation page and receive an email with the ZOOM link, meeting ID, and password to be used when you join the meeting on Sunday.

Posted October 17th, 2021 by Melody Taylor-Fliege & filed under Personal Growth, Personal Values, Self-Improvement.

The idea that a pandemic could be a factor helping you to get motivated feels counterintuitive. How can COVID-19 possibly help motivate anyone? Doesn’t it lock us into our homes, forces inactivity, and unhealthy eating habits on us? Turn us into grouchy couch potatoes? Well, as usual, it’s up to you, after all.

Tip 1: Assessing the positive against the negative.

Knowing how much you’re willing to give up and/or sacrifice to get the thing you are striving for expresses just how much motivation you have towards it, how important it is to you. Writing a list of positives and negatives about what you want can help create clarity that leads to understanding how real your intentions are. For many, the more intrinsic driven reasons to do something, the more authentic the motivation is and the more likely of continually following through to attainment.

Tip 2: Take what COVID-19 gives you to transform fear into motivation.

Allow COVID-19 frustrations to help you surrender during demotivational moments that allow you to look inside with new strength. Look for what you may have been avoiding and dare to face it from love rather than avoiding fear of the unknown. These experiences provide some of the most significant learning and self-expansion moments as they help us look in corners and hidden spaces within that we have not previously known or dared to look. Use this crisis to transform fear into a better you, more motivated on the other side.

Tip 3: Using assessments to clarify motivational drivers

The Core Values Index™ (CVI) Assessment interprets your innate motivational drivers, which influence every decision, judgment, and action you take, and lays it out in-depth in a personalized report. Much different then personality and behavioral-based assessments such as Myers-Briggs, Hogan, and others, the CVI Assessment takes a step deeper, focusing on identifying what satisfies or fulfills you about the work you do, rather than on determining whether or not you are capable of doing the work.

Tip 4: Manage motivation with a Coach.

Motivation can come by eating some dopamine-releasing chocolate, or less calorie consuming body poses, like holding yourself in power positions while standing or sitting. Both are proven to work at least temporarily. For longer-term motivational management, consider hiring a coach online. Coaching can help you pinpoint your unique demotivational triggers and help you create plans, tools, and strategies against those triggers that work for you. Plus, the safe space created through deep listening, non-judgment, and creative ways of looking at repeated patterns through new eyes that coaching offers can provide the peace of mind needed to get through tough times like our current crisis. You’re not alone.

Posted October 3rd, 2021 by Melody Taylor-Fliege & filed under Coffeeshop Coaching.

Today’s Takeaway from Free Virtual Coffeeshop Group Coaching – via ZOOM – 03 October 2021 is:

“Ambiguity rules the middle spaces of the change cycle, where the clash of extremes reveals balance.”
Melody Taylor-Fliege

In today’s coffeeshop coaching, we were talking about the challenge changes can mean for our life and how change can provoke challenge. Through all these changes and challenges it is important to stay focused in a variety of ways. Primarily it is important that we take care of our health and sanity by allowing ourselves to be humans and not expect the impossible from ourselves. Another important piece to remember is to not measure ourselves by the big long-term goal rather break it up into achievable shorter-mid-term goals, basically a bench-marking which allows us to see progress instead of experiencing overwhelm.