Today is my birthday, which at my age is a time for both reflection and dreaming forward.   I have a lot of life behind me, and also, god willing, enough time still ahead of me to build on the wisdom gained.  I’m thinking about the impact of coaching in my life, some of the greatest gifts I have given myself.

Just now I am reading Kaz Cooke’s “you’re doing it wrong”.  As women we are so deeply conditioned to NEVER dream of taking space and time to be supported as capable, intelligent, independent entities. We are allowed support and rest only when we’re broken, ill, victims. And therefore asking for support somehow implies those vulnerable states (which have their own power and value). 

Whereas it’s the norm for even semi-capable men to expect support to lift them even higher – they don’t have to ask, it’s simply a given.

Choosing coaching is a rebellious act because it comes from a space of “I’m good and I want to be better”.  As a woman, especially with AuDHD in your life, that is a radical, powerful choice.

So far I’ve worked with three professional 1:1 coaches in my life.

The first time I wanted someone to look at me and my unique struggles with starting a successful business.

At the time, I was in an online group coaching situation which I enjoyed, but felt was not meeting my personal needs.

And that if I just got a coach, I would be able to figure out what was really getting in my way.

I wanted someone kind with knowledge/wisdom to focus on me and my unique challenges and tell me what to do. LOL.

I found a lovely locally based woman, Yvette Aquila, with a testimonial from another yoga teacher I knew. (I was trying to build a clientele for outdoor yoga classes.). I cried a lot in these sessions and didn’t do much homework.

I learned that I wanted to be a coach!

She suggested that I do less training and more implementing.

That was excellent advice, but it took me years to really commit to it.

I have eventually come to understand that the only way to do a thing is to actually begin, with or without a plan, but with an intention to stick with it for a while find out what it’s like for me.

Years and half a dozen trainings later, following my father’s death,  I joined a premium priced online group program which became 1:1 because the Switzerland based facilitator, Yolanda Sokiri,  went ahead with just me after other participants dropped out. 

I was not entirely sure what I had signed up for, but followed my instinct that there was something important for me to experience here. 

Under the guidance of an African mystic poet, I took a deep dive into my heart and feeling the love of the ancestors.  I came away with a more embodied comprehension of coming from a lineage, and being one small part of a long, wide story of humanity.  So an inkling of a feeling for Indigenous deep time.

This humbling and uplifting learning has enabled me to persist through challenges, and also reminded me that my ancestors include my own lived experiences that I can lean into when the going gets tough.  

Most recently, I sought 1:1 help again to get me past writers block, because I believed that a regular newsletter was important and I simply could not get the words down and out.

Ali Duffey, was based in New Orleans, and slightly acerbic. She gave me a lot of advice and encouragement.

“Writing always happens at the last minute”

“Write to see what I would write if I wrote.”

Which turned out to be a misquote of Joan Didion “I write to see what I think”

I’m pleased to report that now I have been sending a newsletter every week for about 11 months, inviting readers to take action towards their (secret?) desires. Sometimes more than one. And now I’m adding a podcast, Radiant Voices, featuring solopreneurial women telling their stories of transformation (through implementation)

Writing this, I see that willingness to be coached is a brave and vulnerable choice. Because attributable change does almost certainly follow, even if it does not look like what you imagine going in. Which is probably the point.

Also that it’s not a magic bullet – that it is simply another step in an ongoing journey.

I have a trio of offers for you if you’re seeking inspiration and encouragement to reach further in your own life.

For your curious mind: Rest, reflect, rewire retreat is an immersive space to actively embody what a spacious and supported life could feel like for you, which gives access to a different realm of ideas and possibilities that are simply not available when caught up in the daily grind.

For your connected heart:  Becoming the star 1:1 embodiment coaching program is a 13 week commitment to showing up for yourself in all your complexity of past, present and future and feeling for the simple truths that are most important for you to act on.

For your creative body: One step towards the universe is an ongoing weekly commitment to showing up for online co-working / parallel play – a space to become comfortable and familiar with simply doing the unique generative work that is calling you.

There is a synergy between these three components, mind,heart, body, that makes personal transformation not only possible, but almost inevitable.

Which is why it’s so scary to step in.  But the process itself is the antidote to the fear, which is mostly pregame nerves.   Often beginning is enough to create sufficient calm and clarity to continue to return.

There is nothing you have to be or do here.   You are beyond that.  You have paid your dues.

This is a space for dreaming up and more importantly, supporting each other in  practising new ways of being in the world that are so sorely needed both individually and collectively right now.