Wise Wednesdays

  At the time of my PhD completion, I felt somewhat jaded. I'd had enough of jumping through hoops and needed something else. But after eight years of working as a coach with little formal recognition of my work, I was starting to miss it. So I gladly accepted this unexpected award in Education and Coaching.   [Photo: Professional and Career Women Award for Leadership in Education and Coaching received during a dinner at the House of Lords with congratulations received from Prince Michael of Kent. With gratitude to Women in Management – an organisation founded in 2011 by Dr. Sulochana Segera to support and celebrate women in business and advocate for the next generation of leaders, promoting diverse and inclusive leadership].   The ceremony coincided almost exactly with the day I walked out of the government building where I worked for the last time to start an open-ended sabbatical 8 years ago. The timing feels like a wink from the universe.   This isn't to say that...

  I was on a silent meditation retreat at home this weekend and an old insight occurred to me again in a new way: we play little games with ourselves. How? It’s not just AI that operates with an algorithm, high achievers and most humans run on this programme: “I will relax/be happy/do what I want, once X happens.” We think that our happiness and joy are a function of goal achievement. But ancient traditions and modern research alike tell us that the happiness we seek is already within us. The feelings we long for are readily available in the present moment. Instead, we play this little game where we hide the well of happiness and peace always available to us and go looking for it in places outside us. Relationships, jobs, houses. High achievers tell stories of insurmountable challenges. Rescuers tell themselves the world depends on them. Why? Because it supports our protective sense of self-importance – our ego. We become consumed by a never-ending cycle of tasks and obligations, f...

We had a wonderful co-creative intensive at Expand Your Impact and got square into how to close the gap between what you want and what you have. It’s the core of coaching and creation. One of the earliest Wise Wednesdays (WW) back in 2016 explored the concept of Entelechy (turning ideas into reality). The mystery of how potential is turned into actuality goes back to Aristotle and WW explored how it’s relevant to high achievers, why you need a beginner’s mind and the balance between yin and yang in realising a goal - whether it’s changing career, setting up your own business or making your bigger impact. You can read it here .    THE 5 BASIC PILLARS OF COACHING: SELF-COACH   Below I want to share 5 basic pillars of coaching, so you can self-coach. Use them as a checklist to see where you might be missing something that’s stopping you from moving forward.   If you were to have an exploratory coaching session with me, this is often what we would cover (depending ...