Articles
My road to coachdom, and introducing Kate's "The Coaching Blueprint"
A long time ago, I was in a rather, shall we say, “unfulfilling” career. Plenty of good stuff, to be sure, like, ummm, a steady paycheck and no-guilt breaks to grab a Starbucks with a colleague, wherein we’d complain and natter about our meany boss and how under-appreciated we were. My husband would pick me up at the end of the day, and I’d continue my tale of woe-is-me. (Sidebar: I was a real joy to be married to.)
Rinse and repeat.
I climbed the ladder. I got paid more. And then more. And things were supposed to be good. ‘Cause good bucks = good career, right?
And then the complaints would evolve slightly. Under-appreciative bosses would be the main course, with a sprinkling of whining about the art department, and a side of unreasonable clients. And there would be cocktails at the end of the day. Often many.
Rinse and repeat.
The year that our daughter was born (2004), my mother passed away. And in that time of life and death, it became crystal, CRYSTAL clear: my mom’s mantra “don’t postpone joy” wasn’t just a pretty catch phrase; it was the secret to personal fulfillment.
We are meant to live joyfully. We are meant to live FULL lives…not just after 5pm.
It’s a sin that it took her passing for me to face it, but as we know, life wakes you up when you need it most, whether you’re ready or not.
Let me say this: I am incredibly grateful to my time in my former career. If I fumbled along too long, not questioning what I was truly called to do, I was simply being a martyr. And fearful of change.
And so because I was so clear about what I enjoyed about work in that career (thrills, creativity, leadership, collaboration) AND what I didn’t enjoy (micro-management…mine and others’, dissonant project work, etc) it made my “what’s next” option a whole lot juicier.
In that process, I developed the Board of Your Life program when I realized there were many, many like me, successful in careers and scared to leave for fear of what might be next. It’s an incredibly powerful and supportive program that to this day makes me proud to have conceived it.
In that process, I realized I was a Coach. Always had been, always will be.
And the angels sang.
My heart was bursting with joy that I could apply all of my favourite skills, help people’s lives immensely, witness cathartic breakthroughs, help mend marriages, forge incredible businesses and have people live their truths. AND GET PAID FOR IT.
So, I trained with CTI, became certified and started a business. Just like that.
Except, the “starting a business” part wasn’t “just like that.”
It was hard. And scary. And uncertain. And confusing. How much to charge? Board of Trade? Niche? Target market? Which events to focus on? How much time+money on marketing? EVERYONE SAYS I’M A FABULOUS COACH SO WHY AM I NOT MAKING ANY DAMNED MONEY?!
But my love of coaching sustained me. And a hellaciously supportive network.
What I was yearning for was a Blueprint. The Coaching Blueprint. That Kate Swoboda…she’s a smart cookie. She done did it.
And if you’re a new coach, this is a fabulous e-book resource for you. Kate pulls back the curtain on how to build a sustainable coaching practice because, in her words, “you did not leave a job that was not fulfilling you only to start working in another field and then have that not fulfill you”.
True dat.
It is a HUGE feather in my cap that I am one of the coaches she interviewed (and a proud affiliate, to boot) along with these folks that I admire: Julie Daley, Jamie Ridler, Dyana Valentine, Michael Bungay Stanier, Pam Slim, Tara Sophia Mohr, Tara Gentile, Jennifer Lee, Michelle Ward, Bridget PilloudandSteve Bearman.
You can pre-order it now for some fun extras (including a 60-day membership workflow app called Satori developed by my new buddyLachlan Cotter). In the meantime, here’s a wee excerpt of our interview…oh it was fun!
Check out my free training on the 5 Shifts Our Clients Use to Overcome the Imposter Complex and Grow their Income and their Impact
Where I pull back the curtain on five shifts to start raising voices, rates, and hands all while being the kind, congruent, and authentic leader I know you to be.
Simple, and yet...
Today, I am focusing my attention on these questions (posed by my favourite yogi Eoin Finn): How can I be more loving?
How can I be more kind?
How can I have more fun and spread more joy?
Join me?
Check out my free training on the 5 Shifts Our Clients Use to Overcome the Imposter Complex and Grow their Income and their Impact
Where I pull back the curtain on five shifts to start raising voices, rates, and hands all while being the kind, congruent, and authentic leader I know you to be.
Fear on this gorgeous day
Today’s a gorgeous day. Perfect late summer kind of day. Bright and warm, but with a crisp breeze at just the right moment. My daughter’s home this last week (as in, not overscheduled as she has been all summer) and I’ve decided to put work on hold as we fête the waning days of vacation together. Seriously: if it’s not fun, it ain’t on the menu. (Every once in a while, I am THAT mother.)
So to give me the space to get the last bits of work handled before I go off-line for the balance of the week, I booked a playdate with her bestie here to keep her occupied and happy.
Twenty minutes into the playdate, I received a call.
The call display on my handset showed that it was from my home number. The very phone that was ringing. Curious, I picked it up. There was a pause, then I heard an über creepy voice leering: “let’s play a game”. And didn't wait to find out what the game was. I hung up. Ran downstairs to make sure the girls were okay (they were), and promptly got on the phone with my phone service provider. Surely if this was a common prank, they would know about it, right? 40 minutes of my life later, getting bounced around, I was informed that this “shouldn’t have happened” but it “will be resolved” (code for: beat it Psycho Lady, and get another cat).
When things go wrong, I unplug ‘em. (I’m kind of a Luddite like that). I took the landline off the hook. If nothing else, we’d not be bothered with such creepiness for the balance of the day. Though, of course, I was.
How can there be such a gripping fear in my chest on such a gorgeous day? Scary shit is supposed to happen during storms. In the dark. Not when the ice cream truck is happily playing its love song to the children of the street.
In the midst of this, I came across Naomi Dunford’s post about receiving death threats. DEATH THREATS. Are you KIDDING me?????
The end of MY story is this:
As a courtesy, I called the mother of the girl who was here to tell her she’d not be able to reach me via landline. And I told her why. Genuinely distraught, she called me back saying it was her 10-year-old son who made the call. Apologies all around. I still don’t know how he did it, but I can guess why.
Relief in my chest. No one is out to scare me or my family. Or worse.
But they are out to scare Naomi. And worse. And other women bloggers. On this day. On this very gorgeous day, there is hatred in the hearts of those who wish to silence people trying to make a living on-line. This is wrong*. So very wrong.
Please read her post, and share it.
And as often as you may have read the following words over this past week, please reread them:
My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.
-Jack Layton
* Also wrong, I hope it goes without saying, is the millions upon millions in this world who suffer at the hands of oppressors, bullies, terrorists, and haters. It makes my heart drown in sadness and helplessness. And resolved to be even kinder...it's what I can do.
Check out my free training on the 5 Shifts Our Clients Use to Overcome the Imposter Complex and Grow their Income and their Impact
Where I pull back the curtain on five shifts to start raising voices, rates, and hands all while being the kind, congruent, and authentic leader I know you to be.
Persist
My husband recently brought an exquisite blog to my attention: Letters of Note - "Correspondence deserving of a wider audience". (Damn near impossible not to appreciate the eloquence of the mission, isn't it?) The day I’m writing this, the letter of note is one from Fellini to Kubrick… sigh. The letter that brought him to Shaun's site was one written by Pixar animator Austin Madison to encourage aspiring animators to persist in the face of creative dips. It was written as part of the Animator Letter Projects, a collection letters of advice for hopeful animators, collated by Willie Downs. (Damn near impossible not to appreciate the delightful intention of Willie's project, isn't it?)
Read on.
(Damn near impossible to not appreciate the heart in this letter, isn't it?)
Do you feel the resonance of Austin's words in your bones? They hearken back to Steve Pressfield’s "Do the Work".
Writers write. Animators animate. Coaches coach. Runners run.
Yes, persistence can FEEL hard. That’s it and that’s all. Like dieting, or working through it, or training for that marathon…no one promised this would be fun.
And the pay-off? Potentially huge.
Persist. It takes courage…and you have that in great abundance.
Oh yes you do.
************************
PS - I was invited to say more about courage over here at my friend Kate Swoboda's blog.
PPS - Dyana and I talked about the Dastardly Dip a long while back. How do YOU get through the Dip? Would LOVE to hear your words of wisdom in the comments, please and thank you. They will serve to inspire others.
(Image courtesy of Willie Downs' Animator Letters Project.)
Check out my free training on the 5 Shifts Our Clients Use to Overcome the Imposter Complex and Grow their Income and their Impact
Where I pull back the curtain on five shifts to start raising voices, rates, and hands all while being the kind, congruent, and authentic leader I know you to be.
AND the winner is…
Thank you all, for being here…for coming to my housewarming party with full hearts and REALLY warming this joint up. I so appreciate you.
I also so appreciate the earnest group of women who dove into the "Step into your starring role" challenge and pushed aside any reservations they had about putting themselves out there. All stars, each of Harley, Kandice, Teresa, Jessica, Christina, Leigh, and Theresa.
Please find these women and marvel at what they’re up to. Each one is a new and massive source of inspiration for me now, and I’m excited to see what’s next for them.
And finally, I must acknowledge my appreciation for Danielle, Dyana, Pam, Jen, Jamie, Michelle, Tara, Amanda, Carrie, and Kelly for donating so generously with the intention of someone fully stepping into the starring role of their life. Cool beans from cool women.
More in this video…including, zee winner of The Swag Bag of Magnificence, Magnified.
Check out my free training on the 5 Shifts Our Clients Use to Overcome the Imposter Complex and Grow their Income and their Impact
Where I pull back the curtain on five shifts to start raising voices, rates, and hands all while being the kind, congruent, and authentic leader I know you to be.
Your people
When you fully step into the starring role of your life, start sharing the full expression of who you are and the important work you’re creating, lots of magical things start to happen. It’s inevitable. What’s also inevitable is that some people in your life may not really understand it. And, this will likely sting a bit. No matter how self-possessed and assured we are, it will matter, even as we know it “shouldn’t”. It just does.
Your work will be in being okay with it.
They just don’t get THIS PART of you. I know how huge this part of you is. How transformative and important your work is. And how it could, quite possibly, change the world for the better. But they don’t get it.
And there’s a spectrum of not-gettingness.
There’s the “I want to get this and support you, but I don’t get it”.
Then there’s the “I don’t really get this, nor do I need to ‘cause you SEEM to have a good handle on it, so I’m not going to bother.”
And finally there’s the “I don’t get this, and never will get this and think you’re a lunatic for wasting your life in this way. And I’m going to tell you so, liberally, frequently and with derision”.
You get to choose how you want to be with these people.
You may decide to be patient with them, recognizing that you’ve been preparing for this role your whole life. They haven’t caught up. Yet.
You may decide to change their minds. You may decide to confront them and filibuster for their support.
You may decide to call them out for their derision. You may decide that this latest display of disrespect is the last in a long history of sucking your energy dry and to let them go.
However you deal with these folks, remember one final inevitability that WILL occur as you step into the starring role of your life and do your important work:
The people that GET it will show up. They are your fans, your champions and your new source of inspiration and motivation.
A couple of weeks ago, I had challenging conversations with two different people in my personal realm about my life’s work as a coach. Both conversations left me feeling isolated, a little bewildered, and admittedly, pissed off. That my work was so misunderstood, seemingly irrelevant and trivial. And then, I came back to read this post about the value of coaching from one of my beloved clients, wherein she states:
I could have named this article “Top Ten Reasons I Love Tanya Geisler.”
Validation. Blissful, important validation. Right or wrong, it felt fabulous. And it reminded me, of course, how I am indeed on the right path.
And it made me grateful. To the champions in my life. Of which I am blessed to have many.
And gratitude made way for more gratitude. As I allowed my irritation to get swept away by Dara’s generous kindness, I discovered that I was feeling grateful to the people in my life for showing up where they are, and for serving as models for how I want to treat (or not treat others) others as THEY step into the starring roles of their lives. To be more curious about other people’s work. I may not always be as sensitive as I like to hold myself. And I will continue, patiently, down that path myself.
Check out my free training on the 5 Shifts Our Clients Use to Overcome the Imposter Complex and Grow their Income and their Impact
Where I pull back the curtain on five shifts to start raising voices, rates, and hands all while being the kind, congruent, and authentic leader I know you to be.