I've been working with a friend of mine lately on some of her business goals and personal dreams in my capacity as a business coach and consultant. This isn't usually the type of thing I do, but I find that it's sometimes easier to help someone else analyze their business and make positive strides with their business in some fashion that it is trying to do it for yourself. How am I doing? She told me a few days ago that she got more from me in 90 minutes than she did working with someone else over the course of 15 hours. I'd say that's not bad.

There are two problems I sometimes see with coaching in general. One, certified coaches are often taught that every person they work with already had the answers inside them, and it's up to the coach to try to bring answers out of them without telling them what they answers might be. I tend to disagree with that because I have found that sometimes people just don't know. They had to have had some kind of basis by which they would know these answers, and if it's something that their experience isn't able to lead them to, then they're never going to come up with answers.

Two, sometimes the focus is more towards a person's mental state that is in trying to deal with the reality that they're facing at the present time. The point being it's easy to tell somebody that they need to focus on their dreams and if they can focus on their dreams and their futures will be great. What's much harder is trying to help that person figure out what they can do sooner to help affect their bottom line any more positive fashion so that it eases their mind enough to help them focus on their future.

There's actually a number three, that being that sometimes what's requested of the person is a little bit more complicated than what they're ready for. Just because someone comes to you for help doesn't mean that they're ready to be inundated to the point that they don't know where to begin and thus will sit there and do nothing.

I've seen that in business quite often, where someone is given a task to do and the date when it's supposed to be completed but not enough information on how to do the job. They almost always fail, or miss the deadline, because not only did they not know how to complete the task, but because they were put in the position of thinking they were supposed to know how to complete a task they wouldn't ask for help until it was critically necessary.

Asking someone a lot of questions solves no purpose if you can't get people thinking either realistically or positively. Sure, you might have to ask questions to try to get an understanding of someone, but at the end of the day you have to be willing to really help somebody.

I took a simple approach with my friend, which is probably the same kind of thing I would do for anybody else who asked for the same type of assistance. I gave her one small task to do that was meant to stimulate the mind over and over when needed. Then I gave her a specific task that was related to her business. It was part one of the steps where, once it was completed, she could use this over and over as well for her marketing. Then I gave her a suggestion for how to use this particular tool on a daily or weekly basis, such that if she did it the way I recommended it would only take her couple of minutes to do.

Once she saw that what I was proposing wasn't going to complicate her life all that much, she was eager to try it out. Of course we talked about a few more things over time, but all of it eventually led to the three recommendations I gave her. We took care of the dreams part, and we've addressed the reality. The next time we meet, we will talk about reality a bit more, with dreams thrown in. Because the overall reality is that we all have to live, and we all need enough money to get by on, and we need a little bit more money than that to keep our minds calm and clear. If we're worried about things, it's hard to get other things done.

How are you addressing your dreams and reality today?