
Job Interview : How to Avoid Negativity about Your Employer
Everyone knows this interview tip: “Don’t bad mouth about your employer”. But interesting enough this happens quite often. I got some clue when I was talking to my client Tom ...
Focus on Your Vision: A Positive Approach to Life’s Challenges
[Key point: I have described how vision focus works as a great parenting tool for me. It not only helps to manage the current situation more gracefully, it gives a ...

Fulfilling Achievements are Good, Experiences are Even Better
I often ask this question to my clients and class participants: Describe some occasions from the recent past when you felt excited and fulfilled. The common responses I get are, ...

Align with Passion – What, Why and How
“I don’t get it, how do people mix passion with their career? I do love to paint but I can’t even think of taking it as a career and doing it ...

Don’t Focus on the Problem – Focus on your Ultimate Vision
Last year, an engineer, let me call him Tom, came to me. He looked very tired and unhappy. “Sharmin, I am working long days, late nights, still my manager wants ...
Why Do You Do It? 3 Steps to Clarify Your Commitments
Common wisdom goes as we do paid work for money and volunteer work to fulfill other needs. Whatever we do, paid or volunteer work requires some commitment from our part ...

Are you suffering from “Not Enough Time”?
"Some people have lots of time in their hands", "I could have used the time for something more useful", "Let me check on Facebook/Internet/email quickly before I start doing my ...

Procrastination – How to Manage this Common Vice
If you are reading this you might be like many of us who suffer from procrastination. But don’t stop there - this is just the tip of the iceberg, the ...

Ready or not the New Year is coming – Will your resolution be a small talk again?
In January, the common topic of the office kitchen conversation is the New Year’s resolution. Until recently I never actually did much of planning for the year, so when asked ...

How are you setting your goals, Inside-out or Outside-in?
Last week I was describing the concept of “Living from inside-out” to my class participants in a high tech company. The example I gave - If you target to become ...

Happiness theory and my Exercise routine
The other day at the end of my class, people got quite hyped up to make time to do something for themselves. Few of them made a commitment to start ...

Improve your EQ fitness – Self reflection
A few weeks back I wrote this blog post, Feeling- A vital part missing from the thinker’s head. Since then Tom made some progress. These days on the feeling question he ...

Work-life balance in my own backyard
Among so many articles about work-life balance, this one in HBR, the Imperfect balance between work and life caught my attention today. The main idea is 1. Pick a few ...
Alignment with Passion-Why it is important
A client of mine is in the job market for a while. A bit frustrated by the lack of success, he called me this morning wanting to find more ideas. ...

Feeling overwhelmed? You might be overloading your PFC
Do you often feel overwhelmed? Do you wonder why it happens? Understanding how our brain works might give you some ideas. The part of the brain behind our forehead is called the prefrontal cortex(PFC). PFC is ...

Too many to-dos… Not enough time…Cause or Symptom?
My friend Amy calls herself lazy as she is always running behind her infinitely long to-do list. Even when she is sitting down she feels guilty that she was supposed to ...

A Baby step isn’t just for the Babies
In my 1:1 coaching and group classes, I have been teaching this concept from TED on how to create your own vision (what do you want) and design baby steps ...

Overnight Success – How Realistic is that Assumption?
I sometimes wished one fine morning I will get the results I always wanted; I will get the solution to my problems. But alas it never happened that easily! My grandma used to ...

Career Change – 4 Things Helped Me Make the Move
Last week I saw two relevant posts on this topic, one in the Forbes magazine and the other in the TEDx talk. I have been wondering where these article/talks were a few ...

TED finds the lost ring
I have been busy with this week’s webinar. The topic is from the Power of TED; Empowerment is all I have in my mind. I even empowered myself to be ...

Drive – The Surprising Truth about what Motivates us
Carrot and stick - reward and punishment- is an age-old technique for getting things done by others. The corporate world has adopted this mantra almost as the panacea for employee ...
The Silly Brain that makes Hasty Decisions
Monday morning @8:35AM: My daughter Farheen is supposed to be at her breakfast table 5 minutes ago. She comes downstairs with a long face, “Mommy, my bracelet is missing”. My ...

Already Off Track for your New Year’s Resolution? Find out how to do better
Found these statistics - almost all Americans make a new year’s resolution. The bad news is that half of them break their new year’s resolution by January 2 and more ...

There is always more than one solution!
We are having a record amount of snowfall here in Seattle. My little girl is having the fun of her lifetime, snowball fight, making snowman, sledding, you name it! Though ...
Empowering Language – Change the Word to Change the Outcome
Language is power. When we speak, we exercise the power of language to transform reality. —Julia PenelopeWhat, we say and how we say it impacts our own experience and the ...
Live a Creative Life
[I have recently read this book, The Power of TED* The Empowerment Dynamic. I am writing a synopsis to share the concepts with my readers. This is the second and last ...

The Power of TED* (Part1)- Victim Orientation and Dreaded Drama Triangle
How many times we feel sad, upset, or mad and act very negatively just “because someone else did it”? We feel we are the victim of someone else’s fault; there ...

Where IS my passion?
Too often I hear, “I know I hate my job, but I don’t know either what else I would do- I don’t know where my passion is”. I don’t find ...
What is Coaching
Most of my time as a coach is being spent educating people on the concept of Coaching. Every time I have a hard time explaining the difference between therapy and ...

How I Decided On Career Change- Software Engineer to a Coach
In 2009 I made this big leap. I left a high paying software job to find what really brings the best in people - started pursuing coaching as a career. ...
Everyday Creativity: Find your next best answer
The more I learn about coaching, it boils down to how to make life more satisfying from inside-out, from a higher level of human development. I see Life as our biggest creative ...
ICF Coaching Client Study – top motivators: Self-esteem, work-life balance & career
Here are some nuggets from the ICF Global Coaching Client Study 2009: Clients are generally satisfied with the coaching experience. In addition to awarding very high ratings to all of ...
Are you living from outside-in?
"In all of my experience, I’ve never seen lasting solutions to problems, lasting happiness and success that came from the outside in." —Stephen Covey, Author of "The 7 Habits of ...
Professional Coaching – an Introduction
Ever since I started talking to people around me about my new career as a "professional coach," I have got many questions. "Is this a sports coach", "Is this like ...