a reluctant coach

Once upon a time in a land far, far away, I was sitting on a bench in a playground watching my two preschool-aged children.  They navigated the jungle gym with a raw, adventurous curiosity as only children not yet been formally educated seem to do.

By that point in my life, most of my curious wonderings were tucked firmly away in deep, dusty pockets of parental responsibility, exhaustion and occasional bouts of generalized cynicism.

I was feeling protective of my precious pseudo-solitude on the bench that day.  No one needed me to wipe something, tie something or solve some emotional upheaval.  I’m sure I let out an audible sigh when a father and his young daughter wandered into the playground.

With no energy to make small talk, I kept my gaze in the direction of the jungle gym.  I took full advantage of that spacey, far-off look.  A stolen sideways glance at the father revealed the slump-shouldered look of a man who likely had even less energy for conversation than I did.  For that, I was grateful.

He mumbled some sort of greeting as he sat down on the bench next to me.  And for a few sacred moments there was an easy silence that was broken only by our infrequent individual interaction with our own children.  But then I heard his audible sigh coming from him that led me to believe that he was not as much at ease as I had assumed. Apparently felt a obligation to begin a conversation.

“Do you live around here?”

From there, we rode the merry-go-round of pleasantries for a few minutes.  Then he asked what my then-husband did for a living.  I caught myself hesitating to respond.  Turning to do a visual check of my boys’ whereabouts, I did my best to put on an air of casualness.

“He’s a…ummm…he’s a motivational speaker”.

Clearly unimpressed, he grunted loudly.  “A motivational speaker?  Humph….what does he go on about?”

I stifled my own laughter and tried to conjure up the right words.  Words to defend my husband’s choice of life’s work to this stranger who clearly thought the whole thing was a load of bunk.   But, in fact, I had struggled to “get“ the idea of my ex’s line of work for a long time.  Yes, I know he was helping others towards a new level of self-development and encouraging them to discover transforming moments in their lives.  He was sincere, he was gifted and what he did was important.  Clearly. But was it work?

According to the Gospel of My Inner Script, work had to be hard.  It meant physical, mental, emotional and spiritual labour.  It meant being tired.  All the time!  It meant not taking vacations.  And it mostly meant people commenting on my unbelievable schedule.  And how dedicated I must be to keep up the grueling pace all in the name of hard work.  Dark circles and bags strategically under each eye along with frequent illnesses helped with this plan.

Fast-forward a couple of decades later .  My children are now successfully launched.  Ex-husband is motivating others in another country.  And I’m here, consciously choosing to the change my life-script.  To find a more useful meaning for the term ‘work’ and to create a beautiful, engaging and passionate life/work balance.

After two more decades of informal education ( life experience) and a renewed child-like curiosity, I’m being drawn inexplicably towards an evolving life’s work that:

• encourages others to dig deep to re-discover the best version of themselves  
• shares with them a framework for re-writing their own scripts and for setting out intentions and goals  
• helps them rewire the neural connections that have been feeding the not-so-useful habits and ingrained patterns that are keeping them stuck  
•  introduces them with their own body and its deep wisdom
• Encourage them explore methods of daily groundedness and ease in the face of free-floating anxiety or numbing fear   
• challenges them to draw on their skills, their experiences and their unique personality to create a life of abundance, passion and significance

So how’s that for getting run right over by the freaking karma bus?  

• Snickering cynic turned life cheerleader.  

• Sarcastic skeptic turned self-help sister.  

• Life-long workaholic turned life coach.

After I stopped rolling my eyes at myself, I realize this work is what I’ve been doing for most of my life.  Intuitively.  And it’s a natural progression of my teaching and guiding of overwhelmed adolescent learners.  As well as instructing in the practices of yoga and meditation. This is an evolution of a life’s work that hums marvelously with balance.  And deeply aligns with my deepest values. This is just too good not to share.

Just in case you think I’m branching into this area because I’ve got it all together, think again.  With miles to go before I sleep, I’m considering nifty monikers for myself like The Manic Mentor or Your Anxious Ally.   But I’m quite certain that those wouldn’t be good marketing strategies.

Stick around if you would like to learn some basic strategies that have tremendously helped me to create a clearer more settled path from overwhelmed to okay.