An 7 Minute Read, By Anthony (Tony) J. D’Angelo, founder of Collegiate Empowerment Posted May 20, 2020
At Collegiate Empowerment, we're a community. We have common unity via our mission: helping college students get what they want and need, so they can get to where they want to go. Yet never has been there such a shock to the industry of American Higher Education as the COVID Shutdown of 2020. Most people in the industry have never gotten punched in the gut like this before. We have to face the reality of COVID, and what it means to us. We have to rely on our mission and our community to get through this.
This is what the Collegiate Empowerment Coaching Program is all about. It's about creating the space for you, the American Higher Education Professional, to get out of your own way and to better yourself, so you can do the work you were made to do. Life doesn't happen to you, it happens for you. Especially during difficult times, we need to cultivate this mindset as we continue that never-ending search for the best within ourselves. You have a future that's bigger than your past and a future that's for certain bigger than your present.
We've just completed Week Three of the CE Coaching Program. We did an introduction call, we did The CEC Conversation, we did The X-Factor Question, where we talked about your empowering four-year vision. Now we want to share with you the next tool: The Empowerment Focuser.
Whatever You Focus on Expands
The Empowerment Focuser is built on this insanely powerful concept: Whatever you focus on expands. Do a quick exercise for me. Look around your current physical space, wherever you are reading this, and identify all the things that are the color white. From where I’m writing, I have a piece of artwork, which has a white background. I see a white picture frame. I have a coffee mug here in the studio, and it's white. I am typing on a white screen. White. White. White.
Now let me ask you a question: What do cows drink?
Milk? No, no, no, they drink water! How many of you thought, “milk”? Here's what happened, we put into practice the principle that your mind will focus on whatever you feed it, whether it's incorrect or accurate, healthy or detrimental. Whatever we focus on expands. You focused on the color white and your brain began to create a pattern which made an association that was untrue. This was a simple, fun exercise about our brains and cows. But it becomes serious when we do this in our everyday lives. Something happens, someone makes an unkind remark, or we make a mistake, and we put all our focus onto that one thing. Typically, this focus disempowers us rather than empowers us.
The Empowerment Focuser
The Empowerment Focuser is a tool which cultivates the mindset of “progress, not perfection” The first step of this tool is to write down today’s date, to honor where you are right now. After this, think of up to seven current successes or achievements in your life. Then take those achievements and focus on how to glean everything you can to make the learning bigger than the experience. This happens through four steps.
Step 1: The Success/Achievement
First, write down the success/achievement. This is about honoring what’s going well in your life right now. Focus on the positives, the innovations, the victories. The purpose of this isn’t to deny the negatives in your life, but to give yourself the confidence to build upon your current triumphs.
At CE, one of our big successes is the relaunching of our coaching program. This was a project that was on the back burner, but now is on the front burner, due to cultivating new capabilities in this crisis. And it’s something we’re really excited about.
Step 2: The Reason Why
After you identify the success or achievement, ask yourself the reason why. This is what energies you. This is what keeps you going. This is what gets you up in the morning. Why is that achievement you wrote down so important to you?
What’s our Reason Why here at CE? Why do we do the CE Coaching Program? For YOU—the Higher Education Professional. We want to offer a mindset reset. To stop thinking purely in the context of, “I’m in Student Affairs”, or “I'm in Admissions”, or “I'm in Advancement” and beginning to identify as what we call a Collegiate Empowerment Professional. Because that is what the 21st century is going to require. With a new reality, comes the need for a new identity, that of a Collegiate Empowerment Professional.
Step 3: Further Progress
Success breeds success and success leaves clues. Pay attention to your own personal successes and figure out how you can continue manifesting all the cool things that are happening in your life. Ask, “How can I continually make this better?”
For CE, our further progress with the coaching program is continuing to expand the community. We know we can’t reach our goals alone. We are looking to grow our coaching community into 350 professionals from over 50 colleges by the end of 2020. Ambitious? Indeed. Yet we have a path & plan to make this a reality and we have an amazing team to help make it all happen.
Step 4: Next Action Step
Finally, you need to ask yourself what comes next for this great achievement of yours. Taking action is about making a commitment—to yourself, to your goals, and to your vision.
Our next action step with our coaching program is to keep showing up for the calls, and encouraging our participants to teach these tools to other people. Use the tools with your staff, invite a friend or colleague to join you on a call, or ask your student or a family member The X-Factor Question. In addition we plan to partner with several national associations to bring the power of the CE coaching program to their membership base as well. So be on the lookout for future collaborations!
The Best within Ourselves
The Empowerment Focuser is a tool to help you honor your progress, not get trapped by the disease of perfectionism. It is the ability—not to constantly swim to the horizon, feeling emotionally exhausted—but to look back at the shoreline and say, “Wow, look at how far I've come!” It’s acknowledging that whatever we focus on expands. Give yourself the grace, forgiveness, and ability to grow into a whole new version of yourself. That's what Collegiate Empowerment is. It is about advancing the never-ending search for the best within ourselves because we can't take our students to a place where we ourselves have not yet been.
Thank you for being on this journey with us!
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Anthony (Tony) J. D’Angelo, is founder & Chief Visionary Officer of Collegiate Empowerment, a educational production company dedicated to serving the US Higher Education Industry. Since 1995, Tony has served as a coach and strategic consultant to thousands of Higher Education Professionals and University Executives from over 2,500 US colleges. Learn more @ www.Collegiate-Empowerment.org or Follow: @TonyDAngelo on Twitter.
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