Nick Leforce

Despite the title, this is not a religious text. It is not a declaration of truth. It is a book of poetry. For whatever reason, the imagery and iconography of religious symbolism and spiritual metaphor often inspire me. I have always felt a strong sense of the numinous, that everything is alive and imbued with spirit. We are each granted a divine spark, a light that it ours to shine. The Gospel of Radiance is the story of returning to that light, of finding the courage and desire to shine despite the challenges of life and the condemnation of others. It is what we were made to do. Even the smallest stars shine as brightly as they can without concern for how their light compares to others and even if their glow is absorbed in the radiance of greater stars. Look at our own sun, beaming out in all directions, far from grand in size and scope and residing on the outskirts of the Milky Way, surrounded by billions of bigger, brighter brethren. Yet it has produced this earthly gem and us too, who have the power to appreciate it. We do not know what our light might give rise to and that is why we must shine as brightly as we can.

Powerful Questions and Techniques for Coaches and Therapists is a clear, concise, guide for anyone in the helping professions. It's practical enough to be a handbook, a reference you can return to again and again, because it gives an excellent overview of the coaching process and it offers the "how-to's" for each step along the way. Although written for aspiring, beginning, and seasoned coaches and therapists, anyone in the helping professions or anyone who wants to help bring out the best in others, will find this book an invaluable resource, a roadmap, for guiding others from where they are to where they want to be. Open these pages and you will learn how to: - Build high level rapport and trust with your clients- Ask powerful questions for exploring issues, opening possibilities, and inspiring action- Help others make good, solid decisions- Overcome limiting beliefs and barriers to success- Create compelling goals- Discover motivational patterns that lead to action- Help others stay on track and on purpose in life and with specific goals

As a poet, I am often surprised by what appears on the page or screen as if I am the mouthpiece for something greater and grander than myself. A poem speaks to something deeper than I know and often prepares me for or bears me through life in a way I could never have imagined when I penned the words on the page. Poetry has the uncanny ability to go beyond the mere transmission of words or ideas. Poetry conveys experience. A good poem speaks to the heart and soul and allows the reader or listener to enter into a kinship with life. For me, poetry is a way of Bearing Witness to the world and to life, a way of transforming experience into wisdom. The hallmark of humanity is our ability to learn and to codify our learning in language and pass it on to future generations. We even call ourselves "homo sapiens," or the "wise ones," as our distinction from the rest of life on the planet. So, Isn't it time we began to live up to the name we so brashly give ourselves? Our greatest gift may be our capacity to learn. But it is put to best use when we go beyond learning and begin to transform our experience into wisdom. Wisdom widens our circle, includes us in a broader context with life, and incorporates our heart and soul as well as our minds and bodies. If we take the time to bear witness to the world and to our lives, we ultimately learn the same life force flows through us that animates all living creatures. Call this force of life what you may, but it is clear we are part of a grand experiment on the planet. This collection of poems offers my own attempts at Bearing Witness, my own attempts to transform my experience into wisdom. It also serves as an invitation for you to do the same, in your own way, whether it be through poetry, painting, dancing, parenting, leadership or simply an expanded and more heart-based presence in life.

This is the 2nd Edition of I Owe You, You Owe Me, which contains updated material and an addendum describing the techniques for transforming resentment into forgiveness and guilt into integrity. Do you know the price you pay when you can't do enough? When you don't measure up? When you give more than you get? The power of emotional debt is a part of our culture, our lives, our relationships with others, and even our relationship with ourselves. In I Owe You, You Owe Me, author and life coach Nick LeForce defines emotional debt as a sense of owing or being owed in relationships or in life. Unresolved emotional debt can wreck your relationships, ruin your health, control your life, and cause endless suffering. When your obligations become burdens and your entitlements become traps, LeForce shows you solutions by helping you: Find balance within yourself; Create healthier relationships; Let go of the past; Reconcile relationships; Break free of past relationships; Learn to live with greater integrity. Without awareness, unhealthy emotional debt will overpower your life. You owe it to yourself to understand what emotional debt is, how you enter into emotional debts, and how you can release yourself from those debts that limit you unnecessarily. I Owe You, You Owe Me will help you find the key to freedom and to living a fuller life.

"Just be yourself." This advice, given when someone is facing a challenge or opportunity, advocating that our natural self will win the day, is certainly a vote of confidence, but it is also nearly always useless. The counsel is too vague to be useful. It neither tells us what to do or how to be in order to "be yourself." It implies that this magical accomplishment, just be yourself, should be easy and effortless and, in fact, the most natural thing we could do. The problem is that our "natural self" is a mixed bag at best, a blend of empowering and limiting beliefs and experiences and a messy mix of worries and wishes. The Buddhist tradition, which has a very long history of introspection, even asserts that the "self" is an illusion. So, how in the world are we going to suddenly just be ourselves in those situations where we believe more is at risk and we are likely under judging eyes. This book of poems reviews some of the key tasks in the work of being your Self. It is divided into five sections and each section explores a dichotomy that we must balance in our lives. These are not conflicts you can resolve once and for all, check them off the to-do list, and then lay them to rest. They are dynamic dilemmas: Each is like a continuum and there is no one right place to set up as a permanent residence. Each must be renegotiated at different points in life and each may require a different adaptive blend for different moments. The section titles are: Safety and RiskHead and HeartFight and FlowSelf and OtherHere and ThereThe structure of the book reflects the title: it is intended as a workbook. No one can substitute for you when it comes to living your own life and only you can do the difficult and often puzzling work of being yourself. Avoid the work at the risk of living at the whim of the world and ending your life with the top regret expressed by the dying according to Nurse Bronnie Ware: "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me." This is not new. Over 2500 years ago, Socrates said it another way: "The unexamined life is not worth living."

Your horizon is the edge of your personal landscape-the point beyond which you cannot see, the point that limits the possible and defines the probable in your life. Far too many of us limit our vision, keep our horizon too narrow and too close, to live anything but small lives. Nick LeForce, The transformational Poet, invites and urges you to expand your horizon in this collection of 56 poems. When you widen the edge you allow for yourself, for others, for life, and for dreams, you begin to see beyond your limits and your liabilities and you begin to grow beyond the edges of your learning and your love. You bring more and more of your self to life and the more of your self you bring to life, the richer, deeper, and more profound your life will be. One way to widen your horizon is to engage it, to go to the edge and discover what is beyond it. When you peer over the edge of our own horizon, you will begin to see beyond the rim of possibility you have set for yourself. You will realize there is more to life than what you have allowed yourself to live. You will hear the tireless crash and roar of wave after wave battering at your beach, crumbling belief into sand, dropping the shells of what no longer lives in you on the shore and asking you over and over: Is the horizon you envision for yourselfbig enough to hold your dreams? And your heart knows the answer. With some dedicated effort, you will one day find yourself gazing at an endless horizon where you can see, for yourself, all things possible and you will know that a life abundant, beyond your wildest dreams, awaits you

This collection of poems by the Nick LeForce, the Transformational Poet, comes with a warning: Never ask a poet for advice unless you are willing to tolerate ambiguity because a poet speaks in more than meaning, wraps words in rhythms, sounds in sensations; giving you, instead, a message in a bottletossed in the sea from a distant shore, written in a code you must crack and filled with the fragments of a mapthat may just lead you to the treasure your heart most desires.(Excerpt from "Message in a Bottle")And it does deliver a map by dividing the poems into four sections-Living, Losing, Learning, and Loving. Although this sequence is not mandatory, it serves as a guide. If we can use our living and losing as a learning to be more loving, then we do have a chance of finding "heaven in our hearts." The title comes from the poem, "Heaven," which celebrates the elevation of oneself that occurs when someone believes in you: Then, you came You believed in me. Your eyes twinkling like stars in the night skywitnessing my dreams. Your smile rising like the morning sun, melting walls and gates andawakening the magic in me. How can I ever give to you what you have given me? I offer what I have with love. I pour the wine of my words into your cup, wanting us to get drunk on life and share the heaven in our heart