It's raining

I have been spending too much time on the internet today until a moment ago when I looked into the middle distance at the rain, the torrential rain beating down onto the Berwyn mountains which surround the cottage I am staying in, in Wales.  

I thought about my coaching, I thought about all the self-improvement advice I had been reading online. All those instructions and lists of what I could do better, how I could be better. These lists and spider diagrams have their attractions but their limits too.  Sometimes I switch off and get annoyed – do you?

I want instead to stand beside you as you explore and experiment, discovering who you are and how you can be at your best.   I want to sit with you in all the messiness and sometimes the despair, and help you explore how you make decisions, how you are unfolding, what helps you look more fully at who you are and what you can draw on.  Even for a moment on what you intend for your life and how you choose to live it. 

 Then we might think about what you are called to do and how you can make that happen, being fluid and flexible, deeply curious about ideas and other people, understanding how the shadow is present in us and the organisations. In which we work.  Our conversations can become more inquiring, unfurling - moving us back and forth in a generative way.  Finding solutions in this way or simply feeling more comfortable in holding the unknown so that it can be grappled with safely, so our fear responses do not break us or make us lash out or hide and cower. Finding instead we can be playful and humorous helps us to acknowledge all the uncertainty and thrive.

This is the territory, the edge where my clients are discovering their best insights , their best next steps.

Resources and acknowledgements:  These thoughts arose on listening to and drawing on George Warren’s podcast ‘Coaching at the Edge’ Episode 13 with Steve March ‘Presence, Attunement and Unfolding’

Also from recent reading of ‘A Life of Meaning - Relocating your centre of spiritual gravity’ James Hollis , Sounds True , Boulder 2023

RB 10.12.23     378