Sophie Turner
Forum Replies Created
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Summary – I’m so curious how partswork is going to evolve in my offerings, as nature will play a large part, my initial sessions would have to be in person and on the land, nature guiding the creation of mandala that can then be further worked with in person or virtually, preferably in person with further integration on the land.
First though, I need to take my own mandala outside and be guided by nature in representing what is on the wall behind me now. I wonder what I will discover, what parts may rise when outside in the wild!
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Summary – this assignment and module has been really beneficial in gaining confidence in framing long term coaching. I’m looking forward to putting the lessons into action and welcoming my first client in person to the Wyld once the grass is in. In the meantime I have plenty of time to master my pitch!!!
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Partswork was the piece of foreign information, a new concept and perspective that I had not yet been exposed to. I remember in partwork one feeling so discombobulated in the process and the shift it caused so big and unexpected. I love partswork! While I can easily integrate the other learnings into my coaching, I feel I need more space and attention to my own mandala to be able to facilitate partswork in others. This is something I would love to offer my community.
In partswork two I discovered other parts, but I’m still cut short trying to work out which part organises my mandala?
I’ve recently replaced my mandala on the wall, sorting through all the parts and reorganising around soul. I did so and then have reflected on some questions I have not been able to answer. This is not how my student thought this response would go…
Which part organises my mandala?
Today it was the dreamer and protector, I think they have done all along, the dreamer drawing quieter (musician, wild woman) parts closer and pushing old parts (nurse, critic) further out while the protector introjects wanting responsible safer closer to soul. There seems to be a balance between the two and now I know the protector is playing a much larger part than I realised my mandala is looking very different to when I first started with partswork. Some parts are no longer the mandala while new ones have been seen.
Which part do I default to?
I think this depends on the situation, I can be a bit of a chameleon changing to a situation needs, but ultimately, I think I spend a lot of time with the Driver and the Dreamer competing for the default. I have only just realised how much of a role the dreamer plays, she holds the vision for soul, she looks for possibility and when she and Driver are working together, they are an unstoppable force.
Which part identifies the parts?
Dreamer, she allows me to be the artist, the musician, the writer, who I want to be without judgement, while the protector thinks that they are indulgences and shouldn’t be given a bigger platform.
What would it be like to live from soul?
A part of me wants to say that it would feel similar to how I’m feeling now, grounded, centred and allowing all my parts to dialogue with judgement and introjects to, be called upon and offer up their wisdom to soul when needed. To live from soul feels authentic, connected and a reminder that the work is always ongoing.
I’m looking forward to regular work with my own mandala as I develop my offering that is centred on partswork for my clients.
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This was such an important piece in my EBI journey. For me, this module for me was really about how I can best support clients in the long term and that starts with being able to communicate what I offer, how and their investment.
In Rich Litvin and Steve Chandlers Properous Coach, they offer advice on client proposals. I came across this book in a podcast a year or so ago. I have revisited this book in the last month and found some points that resonate with how my perspective has shifted and my fear eased since the work in the intensive.
Don’t close a sale – open a relationship
This is all about being present, getting curious and opening the conversation, getting to know them. Come from a place of building relationships not selling, they may not be ready for a coach but when they are they will think of you first. It may not be a hell yes immediately, but that relationship building is foundational.
Learn to enjoy enrolling
To be good at something we must enjoy it. The intensive and practicing making a proposal allowed me to shift from fear and fuck this is hard to a place of possibility and excitement.
Sell the experience, not the concept
This is something I struggle with, “I’m a transformational coach, life coach that utilises nature to help guide my clients”. How boring is that? it doesn’t even inspire curiosity in me and I’m the one doing it. In the intensive, I described what I do to Ally and it felt so organic and truthful that I wish we were recording. I need more of that in my elevated pitch and less of the mundane. I want to inspire curiosity and possibility with the people around me and those who I am proposing long term coaching to.
Actively seek exciting clients
Client creation is hard and it mostly reeks of so much effort that I find myself overwhelmed and instead of thinking bigger, dreaming grander I make a cup of tea and move on to the next task. A big part of what draws me to coaching is that I want to work with motivated and exciting people, I want to help people grow but also keep growing myself. The intensive and some previous business mentoring was the kick up the butt I needed to really shift in my willingness to do the hard stuff. Clients won’t find me if they don’t know where to look, and I need to be in networks where these exciting clients are. I’ve started taking steps to do this and it is energising, terrifying but in the good way.
Possibility will trump affordability
Some of the feedback I got post presenting my proposal was that I am too expensive, I priced my coaching compared to others I have worked with and their level of education and experience compared to mine. I dream of having 12 long term clients that I can realistically show up 100% give them all of me without depleting my energy and burning out with having to work extensive hours. My price point feels appropriate but where I’m lacking is the ability to create possibility and curiosity in my proposals and conversations around coaching when outside my comfort zone. So inevitably don’t show up as the coach I am growing into. I have decided for the remainder of the year I am going to lower my price point so I am more accessible to wider market, I want the opportunity to have these conversations, to get good at the hard stuff and moving toward the dream.
Always be creating clients
This one makes me nervous, feeling like I always have to be on, always showing up, but in reality it is just being present and curious about those around me. This links back to building relationships, having conversations with people.
Be okay to begin as a beginner
Just a great reminder really, we all have to start somewhere and proposing long term coaching contracts and money is difficult. It does feel easier now since the intensive, I have a few more tools.
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Awareness makes choice and change possible (Dan Siegel). For me this intensive took my awareness to a new level, awareness of who I am personally and who I want to be as a coach and just what powerhouses our brains are. I felt so empowered and excited after both brain intensives I just wanted to devour more content and share it with my clients.
Take aways…
Communication in the brain is metaphor, symbol, feeling, emotion, dreams, vision, words. Your inner vision.
One of my strengths in coaching is my ability to thread the key metaphors the client provides throughout the session and linking them back to the goal. I love using metaphor and will often find myself a bit lost if the client can’t find the metaphor or images to describe their desires/challenges. One of my weaknesses! I would like to be more direct and get deeper into the core of the client’s deeper need, I sometimes feel that I get part way there and then go with that. The times I’ve really nutted this out with my client, the actual coaching, threshold is quick but so powerful.
So from communication to hacking the brain and cracking our inner programming…
RAS
The reticular activation system is a concept that blew my mind, how did I not know this already or pay more attention to it if I did? The idea that I can program (HACK) my mind to achieve my dreams is WOW!
My awareness expanded so much from this one concept.
I for one struggle with ritual but learned here that I over complicate them and infact have several rituals from hiking, stitching, reading and journaling that all serve to recalibrate and guide me. I do want to go a step further with this and religiously integrate a short ritual that sets me up for the day, a cup of tea, my sit spot and if time allows journal how I woke up and who I am becoming. What my rituals lack is that connected intention and I’d like to nurture that in my daily practice. I feel this is key to being able to serve my clients more powerfully. I’m also more aware that I am already doing this and can help my clients in this space NOW. Before there was a lot of self-doubt, my expectation around ritual meant that I would never meet it and I believe it is very difficult to coach others in that space when personally I was never going to be able to do it for myself. This has been a rich takeaway and something I am integrating into my daily practices and coaching.
Action planning.
My next take away is the importance of action planning, how can I be more deliberate in this to better serve my clients? I’d like to bring more of the thoughts/feelings/images into the action space utilise them to solidify the clients connection to what the client discovered in the threshold. Encouraging the client to draw on these thoughts/feelings/images to increase their awareness and make lasting change.
Ultimately, awareness comes from growth and that expanded awareness empowers us in the choices we make in growing into who we are becoming.
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I have tried several times since the intensive to sit and write this post but every time I seem to hit a wall, a wall of uncomfortable feeling, I do not want to unpack my thoughts around grief. Even from a coaching perspective.
I’m so grateful to you Ally for sharing your perspective and it has made my attempt easier today.
Grief for me a tricky one, as a nurse in acute settings, especially my time in haematology and bone marrow transplant, I am wrapped in the grief and trauma people experience every day, every day I go to work. I was always puzzled as to why the younger nurses seemed to let themselves feel everything, not compartmentalise it and get on with life.
My strategies were to compartmentalise, to be busy – all the time – and I hiked, I tried to get outdoors on days off as much as possible. Years ago, I experienced grief associated with the suicide of my uncle, it was crippling and completely changed the direction of my life. I wanted to be numb and not participate in the world, in the end I went to counselling just so I could find space to breathe again and find myself. This experience both toughened me but also gave me the resourcing tools to deal with grief in my nursing career.
Years of nursing has hardened me, made me cynical, and I feel less able to fully empathise with people’s grief. It makes me uncomfortable and If I could go through my coaching career avoiding grief, I would give it a good crack. I’m not completely heartless, the initial stages of grief, the helping a client with resourcing to be with their grief I would willingly do, but I feel irked and (eyes roll), with those who have been in the cycle of grief for so long, they hold it close, stuck in the pattern, wanting to let it go only to grab hold of it tighter and round they go again. These people I want to slap and yell ‘life is for living, get the fuck on with it!’. I was this person for a period, in hindsight it was short, it took about two years for me to cycle through the depths of despair, wanting/not wanting help, and then slapping myself in the face and getting on with it.
Even reading, My stroke of insight and another book, Maybe you should talk to someone in recent years triggers this frustration and impatience.
I have successfully not addressed the assignment question at all.
I am now curious about these feelings of frustration and impatience that arise, what does grief mean to me, how do I want to show up for my client when grief inevitably enters the coaching space.
I’m looking forward to reading everyone’s perspectives.
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Summary
After an eighteen hour shift I find myself here wanting to finalise my thoughts and learnings on grief. My shift yesterday was like any other, short staffed and the pleaser in me was happy to accept the double shift when they had no one else. Exoecting to be home by 10pm, I was now looking at not being home until 8am the next morning and being awake for over 24 hours.
Eighteen hours straight on your feet looking after people at their most vulnerable is not ideal for either party. The fatigue is almost unbearable and by hour 15 I felt myself second guessing everything I was doing. I’m sure my more challenging (demanding) patients noted the frustration in my voice as I tried to politely assist them with their non essential needs at 3am.
One of my patients had been transferred from emergency for a trial of life, she was an 82 year old, septic and not a candidate for surgery so it was really up to her to rally. She was at a ceiling of care that anything further would entail ICU, which she wasn’t a candidate for. She had her family present overnight, thankfully her daughter was exempt from the COVID rules and able to be by her side as she laboured through the night.
I regularly tended to the patient, providing support to both, offering small gestures to the daughter so she wouldn’t feel so alone. Dealing with palliation in a medical assessment ward is not something you would choose for you family, it is open plan and offers little privacy.
On my final check to administer antibiotics, her breathing could be barely noted, she was cold clammy and no peripheral pulse. I found myself crippled by fatigue and froze, how do I tell her daughter she is passing away? Is she passing away? Am I delirious? Has she already passed? Should I have done something more?
I then had this overwhelming surge of grief, suppressing it I had to ask for the team leaders assistance to confirm what I already knew. I knew what needed to be done and did so accordingly but this grief that welled up inside, I could find no words or gestures to offer support. My suppressing of the feeling manifested in inappropriate humour, I was so tired I was going to cry if I didn’t.
Meanwhile, all the learnings of EBI swam in my head, the need for the grief to fully sequence, for me to draw on resourcing and remain professional. Something I would have had no issues with if fatigue wasn’t raging. When I finally drove myself home, I let the tears coming and then the sleep. I woke later today with a new perspective.
As my previous post said how I like to avoid the discomfort
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SUMMARY – this discussion thread has been so beneficial to me personally and professionally. I learned a great deal more in understanding trauma and how I can better support my clients and also understand my own processes when dealing with trauma.
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SUMMARY – I have really enjoyed diving into the brain science and especially the consolidation that came from the Brain and Change 2 intensive (I know I’m very late wrapping up here).
Jen you have bought me new insights and I’m looking forward to integration this further and expanding my coaching through these concepts.
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Thanks Sul, yes I do agree with you but found the reframe shifted my fear around the idea of selling. Now to hone my elevator pitch and get out there!!! I’m looking forward to hearing where you land and which part of you, an aspect I too am curious about.
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Summary…
Sul, I’d forgotten about the loss line and your post has triggered just how powerful I found it, the process of mapping out each loss, feeling what came up and learning from that. I found myself surprised when some losses did not trigger the emotional response I thought they would over another another. So many learnings and awareness from that one exercise alone.
I like the idea of the coach as a shape shifter, drawing on the resources we have learnt for each individual client.
Overall, I’m reminded and inspired by how powerful our brains/minds are, there is so much to learn, integrate and practice. In doing so, increases our awareness and ability to make choices that lead us to our deeper need. Without awareness, we cannot see the wood for the trees, we cannot make the decisions fully informed by the deeper need and inner knowing.
Also ritual, ritual, ritual, with INTENTION!!
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Jen, I’m always so inspired by the way you link ideas and present them, every intensive I think I’ll take a more academic approach next assignment, be more like Jen, and alas I don’t. Clearly still not over the endless academic papers from my masters 😂
Neural pathways are so fascinating and like you said reaching into the dark and finding nothing.
Random story…
I had an experience at a gym earlier this week, I’ve finally returned to training and this gym is like no other I’ve ever been to. During my first session, introduction and foundations to the training, it became very apparent that a growth mindset is one of the foundations in this place of physical transformation. The language and getting to know you questions, all felt like I was in the right place. Anyway I digress…
While trying to do a manoeuvre correctly – I was hopeless, bad habits, the trainer said ‘no worries, you’ll get this in no time, you’re making new neural pathways and a couple of weeks this will be comfortable.” What did you just say? An AHA moment where I least expected it. I have a feeling there will be a few of those training with this community.
And absolutely, awareness is key!!
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Ally, I love how you open sessions so much that I have used it with my own clients and even use it to check in with myself. I love that it invites reflection and a level of playfulness and curiosity. When we first wake up in the morning there is always a small window of time where we are free, before the obligations of the day take hold, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could hold that space open for a little longer each day and ultimately take on life all day from that place of curiosity and presence. When I start my day with this question I feel it better sets me up to do just that. Now to make it a daily ritual rather than a few times a week.
I enjoyed a snapshot of each of your clients, the variety of where they are and how fortunate they are to have you as their guide. I’m always amazed at how powerful a session can be via zoom and I too am eager to see how that shifts when playing on the land with clients in person.
One sentence that struck me right in my heart space was “that nature alone is bringing happiness and excitement, clarity and dedication to their future.” As I look out the window to the bottlebrush, the birds and bees dancing from brush to brush, it is a grounding observation. I’ve popped that observation on my wall as a reminder when I’m feeling overwhelmed with all that needs to be down to feel like progress is being made. Perhaps nature is gently telling me to slow down.
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Jen, I have read this several times over now, I so appreciate how you articulate your breadth of understanding and bringing the readings to the foreground. I’m now curious to re read that section of My stroke of insight with a different lens. It’s a rainy day here in Australia so perfect for some deeper reflection around grief.
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Jen, I thought of you often during the snowstorm it did seem like the straw that would break the camel’s back when coupled with the pandemic. As you said, traumas piled on traumas.
How are you looking after yourself during these unusual times? I noted a desire to try and ease the trauma of those around you but knowing that you can’t life others trauma for them. Have you honoured what you need to life your own collected traumas this past year?
I’m imagining you with a minty fresh aura around you as you devour resourcing mint after resourcing mint. Almost like a shield.