Wise Wednesdays

Quick update: I’m fully booked for 1-to-1 coaching at the moment. New spots will be announced as soon as they are available. How do you know what to do when you don’t know what to do (especially around big decisions like changing career or life)? If you’re feeling that way, you’re not alone. It’s a key theme in transformational coaching and the topic of a few past Wise Wednesdays like this one . About 70% of coaching conversations start with “I don’t know what to do” especially early on in the coaching process. Reference points are moving Milestones have lost their meaning Confusion may have settled in over a period of time.. But I’ve discovered one important thing that helps me and my clients. “I don’t know what to do” lives in the same land as another experience: “I’m scared”. [Here’s a little video on fear-setting (as opposed to goal-setting). An exercise the Stoics used to banish their fears and get unstuck.] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ_R...

FINDING STRENGTH AND PEACE IN TROUBLED TIMES [WISE WEDNESDAYS] Tolstoy had imposter syndrome. At the height of his fame as one of the most celebrated authors of his time, he felt like a failure according to his diary. I found myself musing over this at the weekend, having been tagged in an article on 6 worrying signs of a toxic workplace community in which I’m referred to as a “renowned coach and consultant in careers and leadership”. Does reading that kind of thing mean that I’ve made it? I don’t think so. But I don’t feel that I haven’t made it either. I came back to what I know: the fewer thoughts I have on the subject of “me” and “my success/failure”, the more mental space I have for more interesting thoughts and creative insights that can solve worthwhile problems and be of service to others. That conclusion felt liberating and aligned. Truth has a taste of freedom, as the Buddha said. Enough about success. Let’s talk about peace in times of change, the subj...

I shared in a post on Facebook recently that I never know how to answer the “ethnicity and diversity” parts of application forms and other documents. I don’t see myself as “white” or “asian” or “black”, so I tend to tick “other” and add “north african”. I can’t say I’ve ever felt the brunt of racism against me, although I’ve probably subconsciously ignored a few things to avoid feeling depressed or powerless. I’d say my experience has been more of micro-aggressions. My difference is usually physically noticed in my hair which is naturally very curly. I shared a few examples like being sold “skin whitening cream” in a rural village when I needed something for a sun rash. Or hearing my friends couldn’t play with me and my friend Holly because we had “nits in our hair”. We didn’t. But we were the only darker girls in the school. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be subjected to these micro-aggressions on a daily basis, several times a day, for an entire life. These...

My mother heard the first gunshot. And then the second. She’d been told to come straight back from school, and hurried on. As she looked over her shoulder she noticed a man cycling. After a few meters he toppled over bleeding and the police began to circle in. One morning, my great grandmother grabs her by the hand and heads for the police station. My mother was only a child. But they’d been summoned by the occupying forces: “Where is your son?” the officer asked my great grandmother. “I’ve already told you”, she said. “I don’t know”. My great uncle was in fact at the border working as a doctor in a national liberation camp and treating wounded resistance fighters. Urban “terrorism” was intensifying and the police and paramilitary were cracking down on civilians. My maternal great uncle (front right) at a meeting of the National Liberation Front. I’ve often thought of my mother in that police office. My great grandmother. The police officer. How they must have...

Sometimes it takes a brutal wakeup call to slow down and realign your life, and sometimes it doesn’t. A few people just decide one day that enough is enough one and exit the building. Legend in the making: I was on a coaching call with my client, Julia, last week. In the space of a few months she’s radically redesigned her life and work. When we started working together her priority was to slow down and take a break from her successful but fast-paced career. She had already arranged to leave her job in a bold move. As we worked together, she really walked her talk and prioritised slowing down and taking care of herself while exploring the deeper threads and possibilities of what’s next. One thing that struck me on our call was her statement: “I didn’t realise how stressed I was for the past 10 years”. Why? Because it happened to me, too, during a sort of quarter-life crisis which I talk about in The Success Trap book (still awaiting an update from the publisher…) ...