Do you paint? Or make? Or model?
How might something creative support your personal development? And your stress levels.
I paint with watercolours. Part of the reason for this choice is to practice being ok with not being able to control the final picture. I have needed to develop this in my coaching, and it helps me to test myself in a parallel activity that has nothing to do with coaching – and yet everything to do with letting go and going with the flow and being in the moment, being with what is.
This is a wonderful life skill for someone who has historically created patterns based on control (me).
I wonder what you would like to let go of (in your coaching and/or in life) that you could practice in another area of your world, as an antecedent to being that way in coaching/life in general.
You know the expression “who we are is how we coach”. This is why this work of personal development is so important, to develop our capacities to adapt to other ways of being, if those new ways might be of more use to the people with whom we work.
That’s not to make who you are now wrong. But to question whether that is who you want to be.
Do you want to be braver in the questions you ask, for example? Maybe pursue an activity that is brave outside of coaching and see how that supports you to bring that bravery into the room. Maybe you want to hold your boundaries more, so what activity might support you to practice that in a different environment?
We become what we repeatedly do.
So what parallel activities might support your growth as a person and as a coach?
This series is inspired by Julia Carden and Elizabeth Crosse, whose research into personal development has got me thinking and stretching myself!
