Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Perspective

Take a look around you. Take a good hard look at everyone in the room with you. One of them will be dead at the end of the day (assuming of course that you are currently in a room containing a random sample of 5000 Americans). By dividing the number of people who die every day in the United States by the population of the United States, I decided that I have a 0.02% chance of dying any given day. I like my odds. I'm pretty sure I'm going to live forever. Get used to me.

That being said, my website is up and running! Here's a link.

Vaughn Life Coaching, LLC

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Vaughn Life Coaching, LLC

It's official! My business license came in the mail today. I am now the proud owner of Vaughn Life Coaching, LLC. That means I can start taking in paying clients. Now I can transform this very good unprofitable business into a very good profitable one. I guess you could say I'm unintentionally a non-profit organization. I hope to change that shortly though.

For those who are wondering, here's what happened. At the end of last year the following idea popped into my head, "I want to be a life coach!" It started out as a joke because I thought it would be ridiculous for me to actually do it, but the more I thought of it, the more feasible it seemed. I realized the following...

1. I love self-help books. I love reading them and talking about them and applying them.

2. A career as a lab technician or the supervisor of lab technicians is no longer appealing and breaking into cancer research would involve going back to school until I'm 32, not making much money, working my way up the ranks in some organization, and fighting for grants until the day I die which will also quite possible be the day when I realize that cancer still isn't cured and I failed. I'd probably die of cancer too. Ironic. These are all sacrifices I am not willing to make.

3. While I thought I was anti-social and never wanted to deal with people, working alone in a lab all day has taught me that I actually do like dealing with people on a personal level, taking interest in their lives, and even helping them if I can. The anti-social attitude that I accepted as a part of my introverted nature was merely based on a limiting belief that conversation simply wasn't my forte and I was better suited to walking past someone else's conversation, throwing in a sarcastic comment, and going on my merry way. I still believe myself to be introverted, but that doesn't have to be synonymous with anti-social.

4. After a couple months of coaching, I've realized that I love it! It's fun, it gives me energy, and I feel like I have a natural talent for it that can be developed over time. As I coach other people, I also coach myself. That has made me a happier and more well-rounded person.

5. There's low risk. If I can't find clients, or get bored of coaching, or decide that working at Dillards again will be really fun, I don't lose the kind of capital that goes into starting other kinds of businesses.

So, while it started out as a light-hearted joke so that I could say things like, "As your life coach I advise you to give me that brownie" or "As your life coach I say you date so and so", I'm serious now and have formed a business that I hope will develop into a full time career. In short, this isn't like the time I became an ordained minister online.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Heart

Am I in love? Well, of course I am, but that's not what this is about. Yesterday we went to the doctor and he found a heartbeat in Becca's stomach! I thought to myself. Holy cow! What did she eat? Whatever it was, its still alive. Needless to say I was a little freaked out. Luckily I had no reason to be worried. It turns out that Becca's pregnant! That heartbeat was just the heart of the baby that will be the next member of our family. I'm gonna be a dad. That's so much better that having a wife that eats live beating hearts. Overall I'd say it was a good day.