Become a Better Life Coach Through Self Awareness

A  question  was  asked  in my  coaching  community.  It is a great  learning experience  for self awareness.   As  a coach  if I use self awareness  as a  tool  it can  create a great coaching  environment for my clients  and me.  The question asked:

I was on the phone with a friend and once again I found myself hearing her complain about her abusive job situation.  This has been going on for about 5 years.  She barely stops to take a breath, I once told her that unless there is progress being made, she is talking about the same thing over and over.

It makes me feel when someone does that, abused.

She has a steady job during a time when folks have nothing.  There is a lot to be grateful in any situation and when someone does that constantly, it bothers me personally.

Is that what goes on in Life Coaching, a b----- session?

How do you protect yourself from the negative energy of that?

Here’s my answer: Your question is a good one and I'll give you my thoughts as they occur to me.

• I'd never let  a  situation  like  this happen with a client because we pretty much know that we are a good fit before we start coaching and I always get permission to jump in when I get their story. So I interrupt.  Part of  the  reason  I  jump  in is my having self awareness.  I  listen to the feelings  around the comments  expressed  by my  clients.

• That's not what coaching (with me) is about. The reason I didn't become a therapist was because I could never see myself just sitting and listening to someone's problems. I'm about positive change. (I know all therapy isn't about that but I was young and didn't know it then.) The positive change is teaching the clients about self awareness   too.

• I'd hate doing that. I hate doing that for anyone because it brings me down and makes me feel powerless myself. (This doesn't mean I'm not compassionate to friends, family and clients. It does mean exactly what it says.)

• When I get off I coaching call, I'm high. If that doesn't happen most of the time, this coaching relationship isn't working and I know it.

Does this mean I’m heartless? No. It means clients pay me to help them get un-stuck. How would I be helping them do that if I just let them stay stuck in their problem? Once I understand what they want to change, my job as life coach is to help them stay focused in that direction.

So, bottom line, I don’t have to deal with the negative energy because I don’t experience it.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Why we all don't have what we want

Personal Power For All

I've been involved in the human potential movement or on a personal power path for 40 years. When I started on my path I didn't know I was on a path; I just knew I was in so much angst about my life and my body that I had to do something. What I did was go to a 12-Step program and found a spiritual answer or rather I began to understand how life really works - not what I had learned from my parents who actually didn't have a clue. It's not that at 37 I found all the answers. I found out there were questions. Much more important.

So my journey has wound and wound and found me living in L.A., Sausalito, Mill Valley, Petaluma, Dallas and Las Vegas - in no particular order.

• It took me out of my first marriage of 15 years into single parenthood with 4 children with lots of low self-esteem.

• It took me to other 12-Step programs. It found my second husband of 6 mos. in that 12-Step program and led me out of the marriage and the program again.

• It found me at an obscure workshop called Making Love Work by the then very unknown Barbara deAngeles and John Gray.

• It found me discovering my childhood abuse and back into another 12-Step program.

• It took me back to John Gray and Men Are from Mars . It found me my 3rd husband of 23 years.

• It took me to coaching and writing - and many other places.

My life is a miracle to behold. I have 4 lovely adult children, 6 amazing grandchildren, 2 beautiful daughters-in-law. It gave me a most precious and special relationship with my stepdaughter. It gave me friendly but far-away relationships with my other stepchildren and grandchildren.

Why did a woman who was emotionally and sexually abused as a child, who suffered from very damaged self-esteem, married 3 times(!), who saw herself as a victim etc. etc etc. get such a great current life. THE ANSWER IS SIMPLE. I DO THE WORK I UNDERSTAND MY NEEDS TO HEAL, TO GROW AND I DO IT 100%. Even when I didn't have the emotional tools to move on, I had the personal power.  Whether it's with a coach, without a coach, in a 12-step program or out - NO MATTER WHAT, I do and have done the work.

If you have that kind of personal power and commitment to your path, you have anything you want. I promise.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

What to Do if You Were Taught Not to Take Care of Yourself

Selfish or Self-Care?

It seems when I was a child I was never taught about self-care or to want things. Whenever I wanted something, I was accused of being selfish.  It didn't matter if I was tired or just not wanting to do chores. I heard it so much and so often and didn't want to think I was anything bad like that, I stopped taking care of myself in many different ways. If taking care of me was selfish, than taking care of and pleasing others was unselfish . And I'd much rather be unselfish. I suspect many people and maybe more women are taught this self-defeating, unloving attitude by other women - mostly their mothers who had learned the same thing in their early lives.

If you experienced something like that dynamic somewhere in your past, you might find it difficult to rest enough, difficult to eat well, difficult to take care of your body in other ways. You might find it difficult to take care of yourself in relationships. You might judge your emotions as unworthy of a good (unselfish) person. You might also find it difficult to have healthy boundaries and difficult to stand up for what you know is right.

How do I know all of this? I know it because I have lived it in one way or another. So what do you do if you see yourself in these words?

• Start paying attention to how you treat yourself. Take a little notebook and write down the ways you see you not taking good physical care of yourself. Then get support to change those old habits. Find someone or someones who will help you understand that you are infected with wrong thinking. Funny. My mother also said, "God helps those who help themselves." I'll buy that one. So I help myself.
  

• Start paying attention to how others treat you. Are you taken advantage of in relationships? Are you expected to give more than your partner? Are you underpaid? Do you do work that is unsatisfying? Talk to someone who loves you enough to be an honest mirror and listen to what they are saying. It is most likely the truth and you most likely know it is deep down inside yourself.

Find support to learn to love yourself from the inside out.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching 

What did you learn from it?

I was going for a walk the other day and noticed I was asking myself why I created a really difficult old friend visiting the previous weekend. These days, it isn’t surprising to you when someone asks, “Why did you create that?”

 It’s not a bad or wrong question but there’s always been something about the question that bothered me a bit. Now I know what it is. Implied in that little question is “you dope”. It’s kind of saying, “That was a really lame and hard thing you created for yourself, you dope. Why’d you do that?”

Then I realized I didn’t care very much why I had created the situation but what I did care about was what I could learn for the future from the experience. Maybe it was a little dopey of me to expect someone I had been friends with over 40 years ago to be a person I would necessarily enjoy spending a weekend with at this time of my life.

So what I learned from the situation is:

1. Just because I might have agreed a couple of months ago to do something I didn’t really want to do now, I could have changed my mind.
2. To really trust my intuition about situations with people. I have an intuitive gift about people and situations. Use it. Follow it.

3. If I don’t do #1 and #2, forgive myself and move on.
So next time you hear yourself ask, “Why did I create that?” remember that only if the answer will positively change your future behavior, i.e. you learn something from it, is it a valid and self-empowering question.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching 

Rules for Being Human-Keys To Self Growth

Rules for Being Human

These rules are consistent to everyone. It doesn't matter where you are or where you are from these rules apply to your life. If you can embrace them, your self growth will truly show itself.

1.  You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period this time around.

2.  You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time, informal school called Life. Each day in this school, you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think them stupid and irrelevant.

3.  There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error, experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately “works.”

4.  A lesson is repeated until learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.

5.  Learning lessons does not end. There is no part of Life that does not contain lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.

6.  “There” is no better than “here.” When your “there” has become a  “here,” you will simply obtain another “there” that will again look better than “here.”

7.  Others are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something that you love or hate about yourself.

8.  What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.

9.  Your answers lie inside of you. The answer to Life’s questions lie inside of you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.

10.  This will often be forgotten, only to be remembered again.

From the book If Life is a Game, These are the Rules by Cherie Carter-Scott

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Feeling Joy

I got up this morning at my usual 4 a.m. Yes, that is quite early but it's become a routine fueled by age, sleep patterns and a desire for my husband and I to ease into our day leaving time for coffee and chat. Our chat most days is a dual attempt that serves two purposes. One is to keep us connected so that the busyness of life does not end up being friendly strangers in our own house and two is to give us time to work on what we're grateful for or some topic that will end up leaving us feeling grateful and ready to face our day in a positive way.

So today my day is just the usual - straighten house, shower, handle phone appointments, answer emails, exercise, work on my new course videos, work on my blog. All of this is quite usual. Some days I have clients. Some not. Some days I attend 12-Step meetings. Some not.

I guess our morning get-together worked because I am feeling free floating joy. I'm learning that if I allow the Universe it's timing, I need not fret or worry about anything. It all will come. I just have to do my part. And, hallelujah, that is very rarely hard any more.  There was a time that that was not true but all the trudging has really put me on the road to happy destiny.

You University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Having Emotional Wellness

Loving Yourself

I left my parents home with a horribly damaged self esteem. I then stepped into a marriage that would take 19 years to see the truth of my creation.  I had created a more challenging experience than even my childhood was for me - and further eroded my self esteem. But something magical happened when I started over at age 37. The beginnings of feeling good about who I am started to blossom. This was the start of my emotional wellness.

That was over 33 years ago and I live most days now feeling quite wonderful about who I am and my positive contributions to the planet. That's what good emotional wellness feels like to me. It encompasses me as a relationship-haver, me as a life coach, teacher and writer. It includes all areas of my life. One of the most recent areas for me to feel good about is my physical self. I love how I look even though I'm 72 and have the body of a healthy 72-year-old. I love my naturally silver-tinted hair, and I love how I dress. We all have different appearances and to appreciate our outside we must love ourselves from the inside. I call this emotional wellness.

I was just putting makeup on for an event I'm attending a bit later in the day. I could contemplate plastic surgery or trying to make myself look younger but that is not who I want to be.  Emotional wellness is seeing who you are and knowing that you are exactly where you are supposed to be and loving yourself no matter what.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Self Awareness - the Way to See Your Personal Development Progress

Self Awareness

Just want to say a word about my journey. I see through my own self awareness that I have come such a long way. I noticed this when observing my reactions with clients calling or not calling. When it comes to wondering if someone will actually call to become my client when they say they are going to.

I used to fret and worry and take their calling - or not - very personally. I was sure it was a rejection of me. My mind got very loud and plugged into old self esteem issues.

I see how much better my reaction is now. Through my own growth and self awareness I know my own strengths and gifts.  I do know what I give my clients and what benefits they gain. My mind tries to go back to my old ways, like a tongue with a space where a tooth used to be, but it’s little and light compared to the past.

But whether it is a potential client not calling back or my own adult child not liking something I am or am not doing, I am grateful for my progress. I am self aware and I see a peaceful and growing woman.

Radical Self Acceptance/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching 

Resolution without Shame

If you read my earlier post called “To Coach a Friend or Not to Coach a Friend”, here’s the update. Friend and I had an appt. yesterday at 10a.m. I had offered to place the call because I have flat rate long distance service and I offer that to all of my clients if they want it. So I called at 10 and the line was busy. I called at 10:03, 10:05 and 10:08. Same result. Then I wrote the following email:

Hi,
I’ve tried your number now about 4 or 5 times for our 10a.m. call this morning.  It’s busy. It’s looking like you have a lot of resistance going on to this coaching relationship. You’ve forgotten an appt, had a repair man appear at the time of the call and now the phone’s busy. No blame. Just something for you to investigate. However, I don’t want this to affect our relationship so I leave it to you to contact me and you will probably have to kind of talk me into the efficacy of this part of our relationship. Hope all is well. I’m off to do errands.

She called later. She wrote about what is happening with her and took responsibility. But for now I want to deal with how the coach handles the situation. This is tricky business. Even though you are hired to help a client overcome their resistance or uncover and meet their goals and speak the truth as you see it, there is a fine line you walk as a coach.

Will it be too much for them to handle? Will they retreat, blame you (even just in their mind) and quit coaching? Or will they be glad you are helping them move forward through the tough stuff? There are no right answers here. It takes experience, awareness, self-confidence, a strong bond with your client and probably many things I’m not thinking of right now.

The main  focus   is to  point  out the truth  without  shame. We are not trying to shame  our clients. We  want them to grow and find  resolution.  Being able to break  down resistance without  guilt  can  sometimes  be difficult if we are  unwilling to forgive ourselves.  This can  be hard  for clients  to overcome,  or  anyone for that matter.

Results in this case? Our friendship is unimpaired. I may provide some support but she won’t feel guilty or unsupported and I won’t feel drained or overly responsible for her. I consider this a success.

Radical Self Acceptance/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Self Growth - OK. Now I'm going to blow my own horn - at least a littlebit

Self Growth and Spiritual Growth

A short time ago I got off the phone with a client. She told me what follows and said I should write about it and so I am. There. That's my disclaimer in case you want to see me coming from my ego. (I'm kind of kidding. But really. So. She and I have been working together for about a year. She is stuck in her life for a couple of reasons: One, she experiences a lot of anxiety and has done so for many years. And, two, she needs to make this big decision and keeps vacillating.

What I finally saw about her self growth today and shared with her is this:

• While we as a culture used to talk about "that's how my nervous system is" and feel stuck with it - stuck with the genetics of our screwed up parents or forefathers and stuck with our own proclivities to anxiety or whatever negative systems we experienced because of our "rotten" childhoods. But now comes the Age of Responsibility.  Many of us know and/or believe that we chose our childhoods and parents. And even if that's too hard to swallow for you, science has shown us that we can change the physiology of our own brains by turning our thoughts to more positive ones and creating new neural connections. This is self growth and spiritual growth.

• And I shared that I am a living example of how this works. I was emotionally abused by my mother and sexually abused by my only loving parent, my father. So although I do believe I chose that childhood and those parents, I am not just a spiritual being. I am living a human experience. And in this experience I have choices. I have chosen to heal my emotional past. I have chosen to change my thoughts and beliefs.  I have chosen self growth. It has and does take effort. But the rewards are great.

What my client told me was that because I have done the work, share my experience and continue to exhibit the benefits of having done so, I help her know that she can do it too.

---

Life Is a School - New Lessons at 70

I am lying on the couch waiting for my husband to finish some school stuff so we can re-watch a fantastic series from 2007 called "Life". Very spiritual although it's a cop show.

Anyway I have basically overexercised my foot and I can't really walk much until it heals (quickly I pray). It's really hard to not be able to do everything for myself because my husband, God bless him, has a very big and very time-consuming job for someone of any age and Friday he'll be 79! and also, he is not great at household stuff. Always willing but sort of a clutz. I figured out that he could bring me simple things to the table I hobbled over to and cut tomatoes, scooped cottage cheese onto a plate and added a few olives. I forgot I really like simple food and even boring cottage cheese was good (thing learned).

Also, it's amazing to find the words "overexercise" and "Maia" in the same sentence. I've always resisted and had to force myself and now just when I'm good with it, I have to really watch it because 70 year old bodies (or at least this 70 year old body) is fairly delicate (thing learned).

Sometimes it kind of pisses me off that I have to practice what I preach. I teach that there is a gift or a blessing or something to learn from everything that happens. Sometimes I get mad at God for not keeping things smooth for me, after all, I'm such a good person, but God apparently has a sense of humor and a unique way of teaching me what I have to learn.

So I learned:

1. Eating cottage cheese and veggies is good food.


2. Protecting my body is a good idea. It's not being a baby. It's really being realistic.

And, BTW, I know that lots of older people break hips and things from falls. Well I fell in my own house on Wednesday and I just took if very easy and I have nary a bruise or a hurt anything. So #2 is subheaded "protect my body and know that it's a good one."