1. Book: 📖 Mindfulness, Be Mindful, Live in the Moment by Gill Hasson

Gill Hasson is a career coach who trains, writes, and coaches. As a freelance lecturer, she focuses on adult education, teaching a variety of courses in personal development, assertiveness, communication skills, and enhancing mental resilience.

As a career coach, she draws from her experiences working with students at the University of Sussex, providing guidance to help them reach their potential and find the ideal job for them.

In addition to writing books - more than 16 on topics such as communication skills, emotional intelligence, and assertiveness - she also writes articles on personal development and self-improvement. Her work is most frequently published in magazines such as Psychologies and Natural Health.

To the Book:

Do you often experience emotions like guilt, jealousy, or anger - but when you're going through them, you don't realize it? Do you frequently struggle with a lack of motivation and strong willpower? Do you often feel tension? Do thoughts and judgments about people and events usually run through your mind non-stop?

If you answered YES to these questions, then this book is ideal for you. However, the same applies even if you answered negatively because you will learn new information and techniques you haven't known before. From a coaching perspective, I can add that coaches deal with the vast majority of these topics with their clients, and this book will undoubtedly expand their horizons and possibilities for application.

The book describes valuable information for practicing Mindfulness in several chapters. The first part explains mindfulness and how to cultivate it. The second part describes interesting techniques for practical use.

Part One: Understanding Mindfulness

1. Why be Mindful?

2. Moving Towards Mindful Thinking

3. Mindful Thinking and Feeling

4. Mindful Doing

Part Two: Putting It into Practice

5. Managing Painful Emotions: Anger, Worry and Anxiety, Guilt

6. Mindfulness for Self-Esteem: Confidence, Self-Esteem and Loneliness

7. Mindful Motivation: Goals and Willpower

8. Mindfulness with Others: Listening, Managing Criticism, Forgiving, Persuading and Motivating

9. Mindfulness at Work: Interviews, Meetings and Presentations

In what is the book good?

Individual exercises and chapters can be adjusted for your needs in coaching with a client. I would say that if you master the techniques mentioned in this book as a client, you don't need coaching. For example, in the chapter describing mindfulness towards one's own emotions, it says:

Next time you experience any emotion – for example, anger, joy, guilt, or pride – try to become aware of all its components. You can start by becoming aware of any physical signs or sensations: where exactly does that feeling come from? Increased heart rate, warmth, sweating, muscle tension, butterflies in the stomach, trembling; these changes intensify the emotion. With a bit of practice, you can learn to become aware of these signals.

This is, after all, a key aspect of coaching (used by coaches with extensive experience), employed in somatic coaching, NLP, and even hypnosis.

Personally, I have adapted most of the exercises and apply them both for personal use and in coaching.Osobně jsem si většinu cvičení upravil a aplikuji jak pro osobní potřebu tak při koučinku.

Where does the book have shortcomings?

The most significant issue I perceive is the translation of some passages in Czech version. For example, "Splývání mysli"… well, I don't know why not use the established term "FLOW"... etc.

If you prefer the English version, read: MINDFULNESS, BE MINDFUL. LIVE IN THE MOMENT. Gill Hasson

Do you utilize Mindfulness techniques in your coaching practice?

2. Book: 📖 Stop Saying Youre Fine od Mel Robbins

Mel is an American author of books and a motivational speaker, appearing in various shows and events such as TEDx. She gained popularity through her work with CNN. Prior to CNN, she worked as a lawyer, legal analyst, and holds a doctorate in law. In 2011, she published the book: Stop Saying You're Fine: Discover a More Powerful You. At TEDx 2011 , she captured attention with the "five-second rule," which she later elaborated on in her second book released in 2017: "The 5 Second Rule: Transform Your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage."

Personally, I have read the English version of the book "Stop Saying You're Fine," which I purchased on iBooks.

About the Book:

The book is divided into three main parts that will guide you through the topic.

Part 1: Why you're not getting what you want?

Part 2: The method to become powerful and get what you want.

Part 3: Finding the energy to sustain what you want.

Some interesting insights:

Every new action you take and every positive step you make towards change will provide you with inspiration and energy to take the next step. Each positive action creates momentum for further action. When you start building momentum, you create a machine with continuous movement, giving you enough energy to face the next challenge!

Thanks to modern life, you feel stuck - standing still in life

For example, decisions that were once powerful symbols of your success, you now perceive as moments where you became victims of those decisions. Instead of seeing what your new job brought you, you start thinking about all the other job opportunities you gave up with that decision. These internal and external forces strengthen and maintain the feeling of being stuck. Uncertainty caused by the economic climate, combined with the trap of daily routine and the sense of victimhood due to unrealized dreams, all create the magical illusion that you lack control over your life.

Feeling stuck is different from a crisis! When facing a crisis, your life collapses all around you. A crisis occurs when you find an email from your husband's secret lover or from your boss saying you're fired, or when the doctor says, "I'm sorry, it's malignant." That's a crisis, and what you feel is not being stuck. You feel panic!

When you're in a crisis, your life changes whether you like it or not. Your main task is how to cope with that change. But when you're stuck, the main task is to decide whether you will change at all. The task is to find the ability to face immense resistance and create a small change in your life and build on it.

Contrary to what you believe, you can't predict very well what will happen. Hundreds of research experiments have shown that your brain constantly overestimates how "something" will make you feel bad or wrong. Therefore, when something goes wrong, you'll never feel as bad as you expect.

There are five mental barriers that you cannot avoid when trying to achieve what you want:

• Feeling of rejection

• Feeling of being overwhelmed

• Feeling of demotivation

• Feeling like an imposter

• Feeling of repulsion

In the book, the method of dealing with these emotions properly is elaborated.

Finally, the book offers 8 rules in the appendix that will help you with the transformation.

What the book is good for:

• It contains practical exercises and ideas.

• It addresses timeless questions that almost everyone encounters in this complicated time.

What are the shortcomings of the book?

• It is probably too extensive with many examples written for an American audience, not for someone who already knows a lot of information.

3. Book: 📖 Studying The Inner Game of Work, T.Gallwey

T. Gallwey was the captain of the Harvard University tennis team in 1960. In the 1970s, he learned meditation techniques from Guru Prem Rawat of the Divine Light Mission organization. According to his words, this helped him improve his ability to concentrate in such a way that it also enhanced his game. In an article in The New York Times in 1973, he described his discovery of Prem Rawat and his decision to live in an ashram and embrace celibacy. In 1997, he dedicated his book 'The Inner Game of Tennis' to Prem Rawat.

The Inner Game is based on principles where an individual uses nonjudgmental observations of key moments in order to achieve the most accurate perception. When the observations are precise, the observer's body naturally adjusts to deliver the best performance.

Book Contents:

1 The Better Path to Change

2 Inner Game Meets Corporate America

3 Focus of Attention

4 Exercise of Focus

5 Redefining Work

6 From Conformity to Mobility

8 Thinking like a CEO

9 Coaching

10 Inherent Ambition

Check out this fascinating video:

Inner Golf with Tim Gallwey, how to quiet Self 1 before your next round!

Or an interesting interview for Coaching Association - Tim Gallwey

Several interesting observations were presented at the ICW2019 webinar together with Jarmila Doubkova, ACC (http://www.uspesnykoucink.cz/)

The book and techniques of the Inner Game are essential tools for a modern coach. Right from the beginning, it becomes evident why that is the case. T. Gallwey describes two observations that formed the basis for the concept of the Inner Game:

1. The first one is that almost everyone who came to him for a lesson struggled heavily to fix some aspect of their game that they disliked.

2. The second observation is that positive change occurred relatively effortlessly when they stopped trying so hard and trusted their ability to learn from their own experiences.

I recommend the book and the ideas within it to all coaches. #projecoach