Over the past few months, we’ve been looking at the coaching process, broken down into three general stages:
- Stabilizing – reducing stress to create a calm, foundational space to do the work
- Visualizing – getting in tune with what you really want and need, so you can “see” where to go and how to choose
- Actualizing – setting intentions and making choices so that what you visualize becomes real
You may have read this information and thought, “It makes sense, but I feel like something is missing,” or maybe you’ve thought, “It seems like there must be more to it.” You’re right! There is more to it, and we’re going to explore that missing piece—what really happens during the process of change when I coach my clients.
In some ways, it’s like a recipe. You can get the best ingredients, follow the recipe perfectly, and enjoy the wonderful cake you made, but what actually happened? How did those ingredients, and an oven, somehow turn into something delicious? When we are baking, we often forget that chemistry is an integral part of the process. In fact, all forms of cooking are both art and science.
In following the coaching recipe to create your best life, the ingredient that holds it all together and transforms a series of steps into something profound and inspiring—is healing. All significant change is a form of healing. It may feel scary to think about change in terms of healing, or you may think it’s more than you are ready to take on. But remember that just like the healing of the physical body, healing in your life comes at many levels. Sometimes healing is complex and deep, like mending a broken bone, and sometimes it’s light and straightforward, like repairing a scratch.
Healing can be profound even when we get at something close to the surface rather than a deep wound. One of my favorite “lighter side” healings happened with a client who was three years past divorce and running her consulting firm. She was frustrated and burnt out from working too many hours for too little income.
We started by looking at the big picture of how she was spending her time. She decided to recreate her calendar in her own way and with great detail. She spent hours working on it in between sessions. Then, as she was explaining the calendar to me, she threw up her arms and blurted out, “This is exactly like what happened in my marriage! I put so much work into it, only to fail!”
Her business wasn’t the problem at all—she was stuck repeating messages and patterns from her marriage. Once we zeroed in on the underlying themes of effort and failure in her marriage, she quickly came to terms with it in the last twenty minutes of our session. Then we refocused on what she really wanted next: a love relationship.
Once she healed the leftover wounds from her marriage that she carried into her business, she was able to quickly let go of the “calendar project,” reduced the hours she was working and quadrupled her income in less than a year. Although the symptom she brought to me was frustration with her job, the actual wound that needed healing was the painful experience of trying as hard as she could and still feeling like a failure. Yes, she needed to organize her time differently. But, she would never see how to do that without releasing the message that no matter how hard she tried, she would fail.
We had all the ingredients to achieve her goals: the current challenge, the events, and beliefs playing into it, a vision of where she wanted to go. The healing we accomplished was the chemistry that blended those ingredients into a delicious success!
Ready to learn more about how the coaching recipe can help you to create the outcome you envision? Click here to schedule a Discovery Session.
Warmly,
