You've Got Strength You Didn't Know You Had
I want to tell a story about a client, and for obvious reasons, I’m conflating her name and parts of her story with other clients. What is very, very true is the strength, determination and warmth each of these women possess. The heart of the story is WHY I coach and why I love, love, love this work.
I work with a variety of clients:
busy young moms, juggling so much
women in challenging careers who have productive or complicated personal lives in addition to their paid work
women who feel depleted or stumped
women who are facing significant traditions in life - work, empty nest, health
women who want to grow
The common thread among these clients is that they are ready to make a change.
Life is full of changes and challenges, and sometimes, we need to do a little soul searching and exploration to sort out what is next. Or we need to see that it is A-OK to carve out time to think about what we feel, need, want, and love.
Change can be hard, or scary or we can be eager as heck and not sure where to start.
It’s not easy to change when we’re forced to change. Humans change best when they decide they are ready to change, when they understand their “why” and are motivated to move to the next phase. But part of life is figuring out how to navigate change whether we are ready or not.
I believe we all have what we need to navigate change, but sometimes, we need a little support - and a coach can be that support.
In weekly coaching calls, I inquire about what is working, where clients have been successful, what’s on their minds. We identify strengths, set small goals each week, craft a wellness vision where they want to be in a month, three months, or a year. We reframe snags, and we celebrate the brags. And usually, we both feel just the right amount of stretch and growth.
Earlier this week, one of my clients (whom I”ll call her Laura, as in Laura Ingalls) spoke about her goals for the next three months, which included reconfiguring her lush landscape. She smartly used her daily walks to do a little recon, examining neighbors’ gardens, gathering ideas, and looking for patterns. Relaxing in her backyard is an essential source of joy. She takes pride in the time she invests in planning, planting, and maintaining her yard. As she takes the corner to return home, she smiles, as if her front yard is welcoming her home and signaling, her workday has come to a close. But like most things of value, it takes effort.
Laura is in the midst of a new chapter in her life - one that started with an empty nest and uncertainty and a lot of questions. These were the immediate prompts for contacting me about coaching. At that time, she was frustrated, unsure, and generally, a bit down. The novelty of an empty nest had worn off to dull reality.
Laura wasn’t the first to come to me ready to make internal changes because the external world had shifted in ways that made her uneasy and full of questions.
Our coaching calls have allowed Laura to view this time as one of experimentation - a time she can define what is next and how she wants to be. She’s been curious about new hobbies, habits, and routines. Much of our work has also focused on setting up new structures that support this new phase of life. One tends to have a lot more time when there are no longer carpools, heaps of laundry, and housekeeping for six and it’s can be tricky to choose how you want to spend your time and energy.
In our call this week, she mentioned she had moved from scouting others’ yards to re-envisioning her yard. The years of complex annuals that once graced her gardens had lost their appeal. She craved beauty and simplicity rather than the beauty that comes from hours of labor and blisters. She envisioned more linear shapes that come from shrubbery and perennials, rather than ivy and blooms that staggered over the mid-Atlantic growing season. “I want more structure but still want to enjoy my gardens without spending so much effort.”
I silently nodded my head and said, “Ah, interesting.”
She was slightly unimpressed with my response, so I continued.
“Can I ask you something?
“Sure thing!”
”So you want the structure to give order to your yard, but you want to enjoy it more while spending less energy and resources in cultivating and maintaining it, is that right?”
“Yes,” she agreed.
“That sounds like the work we started last winter when you were looking to restructure this chapter of life, to find things that brought joy, like your garden, but not necessarily with all the fuss, work and effort, and energy.”
“Yes….”
“So, in a way, your garden sounds like a metaphor for this stage of your life.”
Silence, then a “Wow….yes….. I didn’t think of it that way.”
But to the non-judgmental listener, that’s exactly what I heard and thought. I was able to mirror that back to Laura to went on to identify the next steps in her goals, buoyed by a sense that she had successfully done this before.
This part of our coaching conversation was a bit magical, if not merely metaphoric. The process of reshaping of the physical landscape was very much like the inner work she committed to over the past year. She needed a new structure, one that allows her to exert effort and energy in areas vital to her, not merely areas she felt obligated. Given her past success in setting small goals towards implementing change that meets her larger goals, I am confident she will have a glorious, low maintained garden come April.
This, dear readers, is precisely why working one-on-one with clients brings me such joy. This was Laura’s work that I had the honor of observing. Laura’s effort. Laura’s willingness to harness her strengths and bring about change. I’m the unbiased, neutral listener, and coach who asks questions and helps connect the dots. It’s a little like when a struggling first-grade reader begins to read fluently - I observe, notice, encourage, and help others move to a new place of strength and growth. It makes me smile inside and out knowing I’ve served my clients and they feel successful.
If you’re feeling unsettled, unsure or feel like you are ready to make changes, let’s talk about how coaching can help you fuel that warmth and strengths inside you, so that you can move in the direction you choose to go. You can initiate that process by dropping me a line here and we’ll set up a time to chat more.
