Alfredo - ACC Life & Business Coaching

It's just a choice you want to make: Share Love, or keep it to yourself.

Sharing Love means you have to receive it, or become a conduit for it.
Keeping it to yourself, means you shut down the conduit.
Yes, not sharing is a choice of denial, denial of Truth.

Many are called, very few listen, and fewer commit to It.
Why is that?
You all fear Power, but that Power is You.
That Power is Love, it's who You Are.
Stop pretending you are not, that's denial.

I Love You, Always.

—ACC

On Judgment (2 of 2): On judging judgment.

When you see something is not serving you in your life, an automatic response is to avoid it, to resist to it or to judge it.
Interesting enough, that was my approach to judgment, I was judging it within myself.

This is like fighting fire with fire, I was getting burn.
It wasn't until I talked to a fellow coach I respect, with way more years down the road than me that I got to see this.
"You are judging your own judgment. You are judging the experience that you are being given."

At first it didn't sink in.
But later I saw, if we want to live powerfully, we should recognize that our capacity for goodness comes in the same manner as our capacity for bad.
As the saying goes: “It takes one to know one.”

The key word here is capacity, or raw power. I call this being neutral.
When we come from neutrality, even towards judgment, we change it.
We cannot change what we judge, since we are holding onto it. Judging requires thinking about something, over and over, until we cannot see anything else but it.
When I dropped judgment, even for judgment itself, my capacity increased, but it was my capacity to Love.




   

On Judgment (1 of 2).

One biggie lesson for me this year towards leadership, creation and coaching has been the one of dropping judgment.
I had seen its relevance, but I was missing how it was happening in my life and how it was holding my journey back. 
My judgment was literally stopping my progress.

At the beginning of this year I attended a Men's Immersion, where a group of men, myself included, explore our challenges and also the solutions to them from a deeper perspective.
Not in a chit-chat way, as a conversation between friends, but as a band of comrades exploring the unknown and holding ourselves to a higher standard.
This is a simplistic way to summarize this experience, and I will focus on one of the lessons I got from it.

This time, there were other successful coaches (for me) attending. And I could see my judgment, unbeknownst to me until then, playing:
"How are they successful in coaching and I am not?"
"How are their coaching practices prospering and my isn't?"
"How are they making progress where I am not?"

This judgment can seem about them, but it was completely about me, by judging success in my life I was not allowing myself to be successful.
And before I started whipping myself for having those thoughts, I let them go.
Right now, I'm thankful for having these coaches as my mentors, peers and friends; I love them and care for them, because I see them as me, an extension of myself, and I love and care for myself.

One thing that really helped me, was sharing it with my own coach and some of the fellow coaches that attended that event.
Not because I needed to share anything, but because the antidote to judgment is seeing with humility our own innocence.
Seeing that we are not perfect, accepting that, and letting something else take its place.

Where are you judging others in your life? Are you willing to see the truth of that?



   

What you (don't) have.

It's very easy to be bummed out by what you don't have.
To think all day about all the things you wish to have but you don't.
This was me most of the years of my life, I thought over and over about the things I didn't have, and how I wish I could have them right then.
As I didn't have them and since my focus was on that fact, you can rightly assume that I felt empty.
In my mind were things like more money, a better career or new relationships. Always somewhere else where I wasn't.
And well, for what I already did have, I was ungrateful. No wonder why I was into so much trouble.

My mentor has pointed to me over and over about the power of being grateful, grateful for what we have.
That is a turn-around in experience.
Gratefulness is an appreciation of life for what is, it takes you back to this moment. It's just perfect.
I can mention many things that I'm grateful for, from my family to my health, my friends, but in essence, I am just grateful of life.
Even the smallest of things, within gratefulness there is a lot of power, the appreciation of the flow of life taking place.

In my work as a coach, I love supporting my clients in creating results within their lives, but most of the time, the way to ensure those results is to point them to what's already working.
When you focus on what's already working, and you are grateful for it, it just grows, and it can't wait to expand and extend to each and every part of your life.




     

Congratulations.

After telling my coach that my relationship with my ex had ended, he answered: "Congratulations."
That stopped me right there, I could only say: "Pardon me?"
For what he replied: "Yes, every event in life is neutral, right? It's what we make of it that matters."

That conversation was the beginning of some good fun, the following months since then weren't easy but they were absolutely life changing.
Until that moment, all I have heard from my friends was: "I'm sorry to hear that."
And I was used to hearing that.
That statement was mostly followed by an awkward silence and a change of subject.

But that conversation with my own coach have stayed in my heart, since I have seen for myself over and over that "unwelcome" events were actually gifts in disguise. 
And it's always up to us to see through the disguise.

But to be honest, the difference that made the difference for me, wasn't sharing my life with my friends as another nice conversation.
It was asking for help, getting the support from my mentor and from my coach. Without their support, I would only have been sorry for this experience.




     

On Unconditional Love.

As rare as it may sound, the first time I fell in love romantically, I presented to her my unconditional love.
And in all honesty, it hurt, it was extremely painful for me. All this pain made me regret my level of openness, so I went back and made what I thought was the logical choice: I promised myself I will never do it again.
If I was ever to love someone else again, I'm gonna put some conditions.

Looking back to these series of events, I notice a few things.
It seems as if I was holding a lamp of light towards her, but left myself in the darkness. I didn't give myself that same level of Love, Openness and Understanding. I judged myself for it, for many years after this experience.
Also, on me putting conditions to loving everyone and anyone, it started to limit my approach to life, I became conditioned or reactive, I became a victim of my past. I changed and became reactive in friendships, professional relationships, in relationship to my work, in my relationship to everything.

Over the past few years, this Unconditional Love, it's something I have been nurturing on my own work with my mentor, coach, clients and peers.
Nowadays it may sound crazy to say to love unconditionally everyone, these words are so loaded with cliché and taboo that we pass on them. 
But if we chose to see them in practical terms, any condition is a reaction, a reaction to a past that it's not here right now. It is not creating, but a repetition of old patterns and behaviors, as carrying a heavy shell in the form of ideas or conditions everywhere for protection.
And the irony, it's that you are not protecting yourself from anyone outside, you are protecting yourself from your own love, not the other person's. If not, you would give it to yourself freely.
But if this Love were water, this protection or wall is only drowning yourself.

And going back all these years, what actually hurt was my own ego when things didn't go my way, when she didn't respond the way I expected. 
I held back on loving unconditionally since then, and I thought this was only for other people, but I didn't see I actually held back on loving myself.

Darkness and Light.

More than 10 years ago, I fell in love for the first time.
It was a roller coaster of emotions. The level of openness, the having your thoughts constantly being of another person in the best light. I had never experienced anything like that by then. I was in love.
And then it ended abruptly, and I blamed myself for it.

This led me to a dark period in my life, I went through depression and apathy; a period that I wouldn't desire for anyone.
It felt like a black hole inside of my chest, sucking the energy of everything in life, making life lifeless.
My whole mindset was oriented towards this, I was deep into it: I didn't care of anything, I didn't care of any change, I just didn't give a s**t.

I went through life like this, and it was difficult.
Having no energy to deal with daily things, having no intention of changing the way things were happening, having no joy in life.
I had no guidance towards getting out of this state, and no desire to do so either.
I thought this girl, held the key to my happiness and contentment in life, and she has taken it away with her.

Then one night, I was in a party with some friends, just ghosting my way around, that was how I felt, like a ghost; and I saw her, this girl I haven't met yet.
And for some reason, something ignited inside of my chest, like a sparkle, tiny but I could sense it. It was there.
This may seem ridiculous to many, but for me it was life changing.
For me it meant this first love didn't hold the key to my happiness or life, I just thought she did.
Although what I felt was temporary and brief, it gave me hope, it gave me hope that there were others things to live for.
And I made a commitment just there and then: I would do whatever it takes to get over this depression, no matter the cost, the effort or anything; I will do whatever it takes.
This initial sparkle of hope became a commitment to myself, the first true conscious commitment I had made in my life.
(1/2 - Continues in comments)


@ La Pedrera-Casa Milà

Doing the doable.

Years ago, when things in life weren't working my way, I would reduce my involvement.
I was invested emotionally on the expected outcomes I wanted in life.
So a natural reaction would be to protect my emotions, to avoid being involved.

I used to be emotionally invested in the results I got from coaching, so I would avoid putting more time into coaching or to even engage it as a profession.
"I love coaching so much, that I keep it as a hobby"
Sounds romantic, but it's a romanticism fed by fear, a facade fed by the perceived necessity to protect myself from being hurt by not taking action, not failing, but also not getting any results.

A couple of years ago I saw through this.
If I really love coaching as much as I say I do, why don't I do more of it?
The idea felt frightening, unfamiliar...the idea of letting go of my protecting my emotions and finally embrace something I love.

But this didn't happen overnight, it happened as a result of taking many steps over many months.
I just went for it little by little, doing the doable.
Having conversations with coaches further in the journey than me, hiring a mentor, hiring back my former coach, taking courses.
I started coaching people, kept learning.

I didn't turn into a professional coach overnight, where everything changed.
It didn't happen for me that way.
It was a continuous process of taking the next step, and then the next one.

And for you, what's your next step? What is the doable?

"All overnight success takes about 10 years." - Jeff Bezos

What would you do if you didn't need to change your feelings?

Interesting question. A different question.
In my case, I would just do what makes sense, I would be more sensible.

To be honest, this happened to me weeks ago, I went through a time where I was in my head a lot, for many days in a row, feeling stressed and trying to change it, overthinking.
"I don't feel good." "This ain't a good thing." "What should I be doing to feel better?"...over and over.

Then, I asked myself this question: "What would you do if you didn't need to change your feelings?"
I was hit by a sense of surprise, follow up by a sense of alleviation, and later with a sense of peace.
If I don't try to change my feelings, and I just let them be, my mind's self-corrective system takes over.
Like a balloon being pushed into the water, it comes back to the surface the moment I let go.

What would you do if you didn't need to change your feelings?

Interesting question. A different question.
In my case, I would just do what makes sense, I would be more sensible.

To be honest, this happened to me weeks ago, I went through a time where I was in my head a lot, for many days in a row, feeling stressed and trying to change it, overthinking.
"I don't feel good." "This ain't a good thing." "What should I be doing to feel better?"...over and over.

Then, I asked myself this question: "What would you do if you didn't need to change your feelings?"
I was hit by a sense of surprise, follow up by a sense of alleviation, and later with a sense of peace.
If I don't try to change my feelings, and I just let them be, my mind's self-corrective system takes over.
Like a balloon being pushed into the water, it comes back to the surface the moment I let go.