Adventures in Coach Land

So quite unbelievably I have not posted in 4 months … this is for a couple of reasons; the main one being that I severely injured my right eye in April and have only recently stopped treatment and have now accepted that I will never have 100% vision in that eye again … this is a bit rubbish, to be honest.

Anyhow, I digress …

So the coaching is going well with the only issue being my current inability to actually ask people to pay me properly.  This of course is not an issue with coaching but an issue with me and my weird relationship to money and my lack of worth when it comes to being paid.  I know that is probably a bit weird for an accredited coach to admit but it is true.  I have huge issues with being paid and that actually affects all aspects of my career.  I am starting peer coaching soon with a friend from my time on the RD1st course and maybe this is something I can pick up with her as it is something I do need to get a handle on.

One of the reasons I applied for the coaching course was to give myself a better chance of a sustainable income to supplement my artistic practice and so it is something I need to get to grips with soon.  On the positive side I have managed to secure funding for my organisation to offer 2 artists 6 sessions each of free coaching so at least I will be paid something soon.

Hellooooooo (I meant to put that many “o’s” by the way and in my head sounded quite like Mrs Bucket (Bouquet), if you don’t know who that is shame on you).

So I have no written for quite a while and you probably forgot this blog even existed, though exists it does.  I’ve had a bit of a nightmare the last few months in my personal life and been incredibly busy professionally, though sadly leaving little time for my own work (grrr); and as such had to take a step back for a while (opening a new gallery, setting up a new pop up experimental space for artists, graduating from the SSE program and becoming a fellow, organising a new fundraising and network conference for artists and arts professionals (FLAM), curating shows and then suffering severely from hyperemesis when pregnant,to losing that baby just before FLAM in January; has made life very hard and now my sister is having a breakdown so I’m needed there too … see knackering!

Anyhow, I feel that I should update on how the coaching is going.  It is going ok.  I did have an issue last year as one of the people I was offering free sessions to really needed a mentor and didn’t seem to understand reflection and kept asking me “why” I was doing that and turning it around into a “help me, what do I do?”.  So after a couple of sessions I decided it was “ok” to allow myself to be a coach/mentor when it was required, especially as I had knowledge that would help this person develop, and so I started giving over a portion of our sessions to enabling him to get the answers to the questions he needed (practical things).  On the whole it went pretty well and I felt less conflicted.

I had a couple of months off from coaching, owing to the aforementioned, but I have a new client  starting Monday and I am ready to go again.

So this week I made a breakthrough and I largely owe that to coaching, my co-coach and the way coaching has really allowed me to work through and process stuff I had not been dealing with.

Although coaching is not counselling, it has to be said, that it can almost have a therapeutic affect on those undergoing it.  It has had such an affect on me.  By saying this I have not followed a plan, or been given solutions from my coach.  More it has enabled me to re-frame how I’m looking at stuff and find a way to move past those excuses I have been making for myself.

I have been depressed lately.  Over the death of my dad and more recently, my very old dog and first pet with my now husband, the loss of our first gallery space owing to our Landlord being able to make more money by installing a pizza restaurant, and just other stuff in general which seemed to be mounting up.  Anyway,  through the learning on the course I have really allowed myself to open up to deal with this stuff as it became obvious quite quick into the course that this was the shit that was getting in my way.

This last week I’ve had a breakthrough.  I have been swimming 3 times at the beach and I am going to be taking up wild swimming.  A new member of our board has a kayak which my family are going to borrow, this is fantastic as we were going to rent one out, to have a go as it was our plan to take up kayaking and now we don’t have to and I have almost finished my first piece of work in months…… this is a huge breakthrough for me as I have been unable to work on anything since I lost my studio, but I feel I am now turning a very real corner thanks to coaching!

So last week I did my first completely solo coaching session outside of the course (still for free) and with someone I do not already have a connection.  I have already undertaken hours of coaching, whilst on the course and in between modules with another one of the members, but this was different and far more scary.

Due to circumstances beyond our control, the intake session (30 minutes to talk a little more about the process and what the coachee would like to focus on during our sessions) was done over the phone.  This I find fairly tricky as without all those other cues we get from watching people as they speak and think something through, it is much harder to judge when to interject and when to continue to allow the silence to go on.

Silence is one of those things that is of paramount importance to coaching, your ability as the coach to hold that silent space is so important in allowing your client to process what they’re saying and what they’re thinking.

I digress… so although the situation made me nervous it went well.  At the end of the session we had begun to build up a rapport and I look forward to helping my client reach her goals.