I'm assisting a Coaches Training Institute class. This means that I spend a little time doing set up and check ins, and then for the most part, just hang out and watch the class, and be on call in case the instructors need anything. Easy enough job :)

The coolest thing was observing the class. I was worried before I got here that I might be nodding off, given that I'd be watching without actually being involved in the class. But as instructed, I paid a lot of attention to the Level 3* of the room, and it was fascinating!

It was easy to pick out what levels of listening of a lot of people in the group. Whether someone was leaning in, relaxing, furrowing their brow, etc. And it was also easy to observe the Level 3 of the group as a whole. Sometimes someone would crack a joke and the whole lot of them would light up laughing, relaxed and smiling. Then one of the "trying to figure everything out in my head" people would speak up, and everyone else in the class would change to "thinker" posture.

I realized that this is a very unique experience, to get to directly observe a group of people, without having to be self conscious about doing so: they just assumed I should be there watching them, and were totally focused on their own experiences.

And they even thought I was an authority figure, several people asked me coaching related questions! Even more exciting, I was able to give them useful answers! I actually have the experience and knowledge to understand and explain what they were asking!

On the whole, this has been very good for my self esteem. I know this material. I can explain the questions that the newbies are asking, in detail. I feel good about my measuring to see how much of what I say is sinking in, knowing when to keep my mouth shut, and when to engage them by asking questions.

I think I was communicating in a way that conveyed about as much information as they could take, given how much other new information that they were already being overwhelmed by.

I was also intrigued by how my behavior changed given my position. I Gave inviting smiles to people as they shyly arrived at the door. I spoke and clapped much more loudly than I normally would. Thinking about this more, my behavior was heavily influenced by a sentence or two from the leaders. I can't recall now exactly what they said, but it was essentially, "help everyone feel warm and comfortable." That set the tone for the other assistant and I, and we held it.


* _{The atmosphere. How the crowd feels at a library v.s. a football stadium, as extreme examples.}

I'm assisting a CTI training course on May 29th. I'm excited to get into one so soon. It'll even be before my exam.

The main thing I'm worried about is the whole ADD thing. Will I be able to take care of the needs of the room with all of the distraction around? Luckily there are three of us assistants, and from the sound of it, not really that much that needs to be done, so I'm sure everything will be fine, but I still am a bit nervous.

This mood monitoring stuff has been fun, but I'm finally starting to get sick of it. I set out for two months on 3/29/09, so I only have a couple of weeks to reach my goal.

I'd had intent of going indefinitely beyond the 2 months, but now that the novelty has worn off I'm much less inclined to. I'm thankful to have implemented a great coaching practice in how I set this up. According to my school, when you set a goal with a client in coaching, you want that goal to be measurable.

So instead of setting out with a log to track my mood in the hopes that I'd do it forever, I picked an amount of time that balanced how much of a stretch I thought I could handle committing to, with being enough data to maybe get something useful out of. While I'd still had hopes of going on with this experiment for a year or more, it turns out that I'm leaning on that defined goal to finish out my min without being resentful or overwhelmed and giving up about the prospect of going on. For me, its the difference between an achievement and a failure. And I still have the option open to extend either for a set amount of time or indefinitely when the set amount of time rolls around, should I have a change of heart.

Jeff's making some new graphs for me, which I'm excited about.

I've cut down from 1.5 to .5mg Klonopin, and have a baseline before and after, so it would be neat if Jeff can get a graph clear enough to see if there has been a baseline change. My guess is that my anxiety levels have gone up, but not to a point that I can't handle. I don't think happiness levels have been significantly impacted.

It would be neat to continue graphing, so that I could more carefully track other med changes, among other variables, but its just getting two life disrupting to jump up every hour on the hour and stop what I'm doing to write things down.

Maybe having run this experiment, I will be naturally better at monitoring my moods once its over. I'm now very used to stopping at a moment's notice to evaluate how I'm feeling. That's a useful practice, especially for someone like me who has wide swings. And I even have an internalized scale by which to quantify.

The practice was really useful that time when I realized I was making decisions while depressed and evaluating when elated. I think I'll be better now at taking my own pulse when feeling impulsive. "Do I want to be making this decision while being impacted by this mood?" "How much is this mood impacting my decisions?" While I may not know what the impact is, I can guess at its strength based on the strength of the mood, and I can make related choices based on how serious the decision is.

One of the requirements for my coaching certification is to make a checklist of items that I want to complete during the certification program. It is recommended that I put more than 30 of them. They can be categorized however I want. Initially I was going with the model that they gave, which is to use the "wheel of life" exercise they give us, where we look at several aspects of life and see how we rate each one so that we can bring our life into better balance.

I did that at first, but I'm redoing mine with values. When I worked with my coach Leslie to figure out my values, the key ones we came up with are:

-Unique and Interesting
-Excellence
-Contribution (high impact/making a difference)
-Intellectual Savvy
-Dance movement art (hard to explain but I know what it means)
-Respect
-Openness and Love
-Abundance (I don't recall what I meant by that but it must be significant since its one that I had circled)

So, re-categorizing and reframing my initial list:

( Read more... )

So far, just the act of writing this list, has inspired me to take major action steps on several items.

Also, it has been friggin hard to write in the positive present tense! Even after writing everything very intentionally as "I am," I've still had to go back and edit out several places where my sabateur slipped in "I will."

In order to keep up on my practice, I contacted a couple of people from my coaching class and asked them to do coaching swap with me. Both agreed to it, and I had the phone call with the first one tonight.

It was excellent. She helped me work through some of my issues around getting started with coaching and brainstorm about getting clients, and I worked on stuff with her which she was very happy about and thanked me for.

I came away from the phone call feeling excited and inspired. I got the feedback once again that I am a good coach. I do think I'm a good coach when I'm doing it, but when not practicing its easy for me to get back into wondering what I have to offer. Its good for me to practice to keep my confidence up.

So, while I'm at it, I want to put out there again that I'm still looking for paying clients. I think I care less about how much for now, while I'm just getting started, so I'm willing to do a month of coaching, 4 half hour sessions for $50, which ends up being about $10/session if you average in the free half hour trial session. So if any of you all know someone who is interested, do let me know.

My journal is my place for whining and angst, but as a coach I'm very solid, a good listener, and helpful!

At this point I've given short tries to many different therapists. The one I'm seeing now is my favorite other than perhaps the first one I saw back in Austin, its hard to compare them given how long ago it is now from when I was living in Austin TX.

Anyway, I quickly noticed in coaching school that there is a lot of overlap between what she does and what I was learning in coaching school. When I mentioned this to my therapist, she noted that she actually is a practicing coach as well as a therapist, and that yes, she uses a lot of coaching with me.*

I think I'd been attributing the coaching she does to CBT, so now I'm curious about how much is overlap of CBT and coaching v.s. combination.

Writing this reminded me of the recommendation of "The Feeling Good Handbook" I'd gotten from a friend in coaching school, which is supposed to explain about CBT in detail. I've also ordered "Co-active Coaching," which is the book written by the founders of the school I'm attending. So if I ever get around to reading the two of them I should be pretty far into answering my own questions ;)

I was very lucky in coaching to have Karen, one of the founders of the school, coauthors of the book, and current president of the school, teaching my class, along with another very excellent coach, Hope. With being the president and her other organizational involvement, the group I was in was the first that Karen had taught herself in about five years.

These teachers are a couple of the most genuine people I've witnessed, and it was inspiring to watch and work with them. Its also inspiring to see that leaders like them are in charge of the organization I'm working with. Karen is one of those people who you can tell genuinely is working to make the world a better place in the ways that she thinks she can, and that this is her primary goal in what she does.

* This therapist is also the person who recommended coaching school to me, and this school in particular, although its not the one which she attended herself.

Zeitgeist is a handy term that I picked up in my abnormal psych class. It means "spirit of the times." Its something I've been feeling very strongly. So many of the different cultures I've been coming across and hearing about seem to be pointing in the same direction. Buddhism, nvc, therapy, coaching school, the improv classes Patri tells me about, even Avenue Q seemed to hold some of this spirit.

When I brought it up with elphie we mused about how this may make sense in the scheme of things. My abnormal psych prof described zeitgeist as a circle, with society picking up and repeating the same patterns. I noted that it seems like there is a real change going, and Elena noted that its like a spiral. At first I didn't like this analogy, because I picture a spiral like a funnel, but elphie and I were able to agree on it feeling like a spiral more like a slinky. I picture it as something like a slinky with ebbs and flows of enlarging and shrinking spirals.

In any event, there is good argument for progression. As elphie said, we have moved from tribal our huge sprawl in an incredibly short period of time relative to evolution. It makes sense for a wave of spiritual change to follow his vacuum. Cultures are assimilated and dissipate, atheism is popping up everywhere, there are human needs that are not being filled.

I was listening to a Michael Meade CD, and he talked about how the united nations tried to boil down the problems of the world. When they took the problems of nations down to one word, as polled from all the country in the world, the word was "meaningless." That was taken from four other categorical words, all ending in "less," one of which was "hopeless."

I feel completely in the throws of this zeitgeist. Hopelessness and meaninglessness abound in my life. I'm doing so much self work, and yet, I'm just not breaking out of these. I feel like I'm on the edge, but they are pervasive. And, I do feel like the lightness I am trying to join is working its will, and I do have some hope through my hopelessness that I just may get somewhere. I'm on an edge, and its my fear that is holding me back. I'm scared that if I start crying, if I really let myself go and get wrapped up in it, that I might never come back. Then again, what am I if I am holding back from living my life. This edge will not last forever, and my life slips away the longer I am on it.

I guess its safe to say that I am terrified.

I'm in my element. At first I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to swing it, given how positive these people were, but they quickly showed that they were serious, and I became more enthusiastic. At this point I'm happy to be where I am and feel that I'm getting the hang of things.

In general, I've moved from: "These will be great skills to have regardless of whether or not I end up becoming a coach [because I don't have faith in myself that I'll be able to do it]"

To: "I think I can do this and I have ideas for how to get a client base [although it would probably take a long time for me to get to a point of making a living doing this]"

I have a few months at least before I start looking for paying clients, but I do have a lot more faith right now that I actually will get to the point of starting a business. The schedule is for four more monthly weekend workshops, and then a five or six month certification process, which includes having two paying clients, being coached on my coaching, and conference discussions with a group of other students.