Am I standing in my power or am I trying to please another?
–Debbie Ford
The Right Questions, HarperCollins, 2004

Will this choice bring me long-term fulfillment or will it bring me short-term gratification?
—-Debbie Ford, The Right Questions, HarperCollins, 2004

by ken winston caine

Towns and cities could cut electricity use significantly — simply and painlessly.

Almost overnight.

All they have to do is to commit to quit trying to light up the night as though it is day.

Turn off, or turn down, street lighting, building lighting and after-hours electric signs on businesses. (This was decreed by President Nixon as national policy during the first oil embargo in 1973, alongside more drastic measures such as gas rationing and a national 55 mph speed limit.)

Cutting street lighting has been shown to CUT crime. (More on that in a moment.)

Bring back the night.

Bring back the stars.

If cities would turn off just every other streetlight, on alternating sides of the street, immediately they would cut streetlighting energy use in half. And cut the cost of streetlighting in half.

Why is no one thinking like this at a time when greenhouse gasses produced by coal-and-other-carbon-fuel-fired power plants are destroying the planet’s equilibrium and by extension, our current and future quality of life … and simultaneously, world-wide, we are facing an energy shortage?

Instead, power companies are calling for more power plants and, at the same time, (more…)

by ken winston caine

The questions you ask and choose to explore shape the outcomes you achieve. The trick is to ask powerful questions.

They cut to the chase. They move you forward quickly and smartly.

Asking powerful questions is at the heart of “coaching” as it was developed by Thomas Leonard. And I’ve been collecting lists of powerful questions, or coaching questions, for 11 years — ever since I was first exposed to Leonard’s approach.

But simply being armed with a mile-long list of powerful questions does not make one a good coach. Or guarantee you magnificent, rapid, sustainable personal success. The good coach and the smart achiever know how to ask the right type of question at exactly the right moment.

Better, I think, to understand what a powerful question is, so that you can instinctively pose one when it is needed, than to have a long list of questions to sort through. (Though a list is valuable.)

So what is a powerful question?

The best explanation I have come across comes not from the world of life coaching or business coaching or corporate coaching, but from pioneers of The World Cafe process, Juanita Brown and David Isaacs.

They write, on their website, that a powerful question has eight defining characteristics: (more…)

by ken winston caine

Do projects always take longer to complete than you expect?

I know they often do for me.

Big Idea Coach Jim M. Allen has three cool tips for fixing that. I’ll share one of them here. He says, (more…)

by ken winston caine

I have just made the most remarkable 3,000-year-old discovery that instantly soothes aching, inflamed muscles and nerves and relieves pain and inflammation.

And can’t believe that it’s taken me all this time. I must have first read about this technique at least 30 years ago and “learned it” again in numerous herbal medicine courses over the years.

The forgotten, ancient medical miracle used thousands of years ago in India and China and in other folk-medicine traditions in more recent centuries?

The ginger compress.

Just a hot, moist pack of ginger placed over acutely inflamed muscles and nerves.

I’d never tried it, having lost faith in herbal compresses years ago when I found that most I experimented with seemed to have no discernible healing power beyond the effect of the moist heat. Not so with the ginger compress. It really works. REALLY works. Fast.

It costs pennies, takes seconds to make. You probably already have the makings on hand in your house if you raid the spice cabinet and improvise a bit. And it instantly draws away the swelling and pain… Even better, the effect is lasting.

I’ll tell you how I made it in a moment. (more…)

by ken winston caine

It is a sin in the evolutionary process of God to try to suppress another’s creative spirit.
– Paramahansa Yogananda

I think so.

Yet so often we do it.

In fact, I’ve wandered in and out of the news business for 3-1/2 decades for this very reason. I have a love-hate relationship with reporting.

It can be such a force for good. And it can so inherently destructive. And a reporter doesn’t get to choose (more…)

31 days of absolutely free success coaching from a guy who really knows his stuff.

You can stretch it out to 31 weeks, if you like, by taking only one session each week.

Check it out at (more…)

Youll find a nice modern spin on the Kama Sutra’s “64 Arts of Accomplishment” from Naomi at (more…)