Gratitude is a foundational strength. When you feel gratitude, a lot of other strengths can be built on top. For instance, the ability to love and be loved would be difficult, if not impossible, without gratitude.

Many of my patients are highly educated, leaders in their industries, and among the best and the brightest. They're also perfectionists, and this can be a real problem for them as it can lead to feelings of anxiety and depression, and often wreaks havoc on relationships.

The loaded goal is that goal that seems to be your most important and longest-standing one -- it's the one that "for some reason, I don't seem to be able to make any real progress on," and "this year, I'm finally going to handle."

But what I missed in all this searching for leisure professionals is doing leisure mentoring, coaching, or consulting for people who simply want to have fun and want some guidance in how to make the most of their leisure time -- and where to get these leisure experiences.

It's easy to accept this about our parents when it comes to technology, but we have a much harder time accepting it when it comes to emotional issues. On some level, we still think of our parents like gods.

"In many ways," said Robert, "the ultimate psychotherapy is simply to relax about things." While it was just a passing comment, the reason it has been humming along inside my mind ever since is that it so directly mirrors the experience I have with my own clients.

As a profession, life coaching has some branding challenges. To the general population, coaching seems to be a vague, shadowy thing that people with lots of money and lots of time do to feel better about themselves.

If you do anything to work on the mental side of your sport, it had better be mental imagery. Why? Because there is no more powerful mental tool than mental imagery and it can have a huge impact on your sports performance.