I believe that, given the right conditions, we will play the part that we are destined to play, and that this is ultimately good for the whole.
My focus is to put the conditions in place to listen to yourself.
My work is to facilitate self-knowledge, self-love and self-expression, in harmonious complementarity with others.
As a result of working in a coaching collaboration with me, you will connect deeply with your endgoal and objectives. My goal for you is that you are so connected to who you really are that the actions necessary to get you to your objectives are effortless.
Our process will involve identifying what lies at the core for you, remove roadblocks, and identify sources of support and actions you feel comfortable taking. The goal is effortlessness! (while with me though, it might require courageous exploration, feeling the emotions that might show their heads, and a lot of communication with me to let me know what your style of being helped is: we are all different; I personally like it when a coach lets me get to the end of my long interconnected stream of ideas; but I know somebody else might prefer more guidance, short sentences, and dialogue: it is all up to what works for you!)
We will also look for ways, if that is something you need, to anchor your discoveries into reminders: action plans, music pieces, art work, videos, drawings, special T-shirt, dance or physical routine/gesture... The idea is that practice makes perfect, repetition allows for new neuropathways to become highways. And we all know what we should do, the idea is to get just a little bit of a nudge of support to help you carry out the necessary actions in the deeply connected direction. Depending on what you choose, and whether it is a gesture, a dance, an art piece, or a simple sticky note or a classic Action Plan, or even in a fun or beautiful object, anchoring what matters to you is a sure way to effortlessly and pleasantly find your way back to what really matters...
My goal is for you to do your best thinking, to your meaning and to your solutions. What I try is that you feel good/at ease, understood, and challenged all at the same time, so that you can do your most enjoyable, brilliant creative and strategic thinking. And of course, I would like you to feel the hope, the joy and the potential of this life! And to know you have tremendous personal power: use it well, for all.
What are emotions?
Emotions are pointers to Needs (Time-based/at that moment - or Values, which are the Universal version of Needs). So it is important, healthy and useful to feel them! As Brenée Brown puts it, "you cannot selectively numb emotion": if you don't feel shame, anger, fear, or sadness, you cannot feel true joy, true love, bliss.
Feeling an emotion without turning it into self-attack, nor attack against others, is a skill, best practiced in security. Simply feeling it takes focus, and enough emotional security, love and validation - from oneself or somebody else who can 'hold space'.
Then it takes the body maximum 90 seconds to feel the full extent of an emotion, no matter how bad.
This allows you to find out what our Deeper Need is, and to then proceed to attending to it.
You can either:
- give it to yourself,
- ask openly for help, or
- find somebody else to help you with.
What works best is to give yourself the satisfaction (or validation/legitimacy) of the Need first (= 'of course I have a right to that!'); then, you can ask others in an way 'they can refuse' ;)
For example, if you need Connection, you might want to connect with yourself first. Then it is easier to express your vulnerability and wish to somebody, making sure they feel free to join you or to decline; or you might ask somebody else who is available to match/play with you at this point.
Realistically, we don't always know what our deeper need is: we often have to search, go deeper into ourselves, through introspection, conversation, or art, for instance. As long as you try not to blame yourself nor others, but just feel your emotion: it is a fantastic pointer to what the deeper need (or value) is.
What types of Needs do we typically have?
In his Non-Violent (or Compassionate) Communication method, Marshall Rosenberg suggests universal Needs we have (other lists can complement this one, I see it as a starting point to uncovering 'your' words), such as acceptance, community, love, and consideration, or air, food, movement, respect, or peace.
See a non-exhaustive list below from his book, Non-Violent Communication: A Language of Life.
Needs are expressed AND timed differently in different human beings:
I might have a need for authentic self-expression, while the other's feelings might point to a need for self-worth & acceptance.
None is better, there is no better way, system, or rule that applies to everyone: we have different needs, at different times. What matters is valuing, and responding to the reality of the person in front of us, beyond fear-conditioning, separation, or judgment. In essence, we want to develop a buffer of love and compassion, a safe transitional space that puts things in perspective. Enough to realize that we all have different, cultural or personal, historical, etc. ways to fulfill the satisfaction of the same needs - and the timing makes it interesting ;)
Let things be different, accept the full reality of the other, and you might just get what you want (the recognition of your needs). We are born to entrain (here described as 'the adaptive function by which we voluntarily synchronize our brains and bodies to the environment): start accepting, and you will get accepted (maybe not straight away, but eventually). And that calls for compassion (self & others'): it is not always easy being human, & we do the best we can through our sometimes intense emotional change curves. When emotions are accepted, they do their job of releasing the tension, and connecting us to our deeper needs (all the parts of ourselves), and to each other.
Feeling our vulnerability without immediately acting out or lashing out at ourselves or others is a skill. When we care enough about ourselves to stay present to how we really feel, we start developing emotional autonomy, one of the most striking attributes of healthy leaders: no matter what you do, they still care about you being well, because they care so much about listening to, and feeling well themselves. It is not a zero-sum game where if one feels happy or good, the other one loses: it is a game of mutual support and inspiration, of flexible and loving self- and other- focus, where everybody wins, collectively.
Emotional leadership is about connecting to our deeper need, and to the deeper need of the person in front of us. This takes inner & outer security to be able to listen. And you get inner security from peaceful love of all that is: from yourself, from loved ones, and from a larger perspective, from a feeling of Unity with the All.
The goal is becoming whole again: reconciling all parts of our identity, and reconciling with all others in all their ways: (we always were made of the same 'stuff' in the first place).
One word of caution: you cannot push someone (nor yourself) into opening, learning, or growing.
You can allow others (and yourself) to open, to grow and learn, through love and acceptance of what is, as it is, now.
What helps (listen to difficult emotions or information) is to relax and expand your focus to a safe, stable whole. The difficult part becomes smaller, in perspective: it can be contained.
Control yourself, be aware of what you stand for, keep your mental climate clear, yet flexible. All you can do for others is to give them a safe framework to play in, because you are clear about how you want to feel - so not threatened by their expressing of different values.
Remember the North American Indian tale of the two wolves: one aggressive, one kind - fighting. The one who wins is the one you feed the most. So pay attention to your thoughts, about how you talk to yourself, what image you have of yourself, how do you react when you fail, when you need a break, etc.
So instead of judging or feeling guilty, try this:
- I am responsible for finding what works for me, and to make an open request (a 'non-violent' one, something the other can say 'no' to). Here are a few tips on what you can ask for (for example: are you willing/able to listen to me for 10 minutes, without speaking? I would really appreciate the opportunity to get my story out, while you hold the space for me. If you can't, or it's too long, it's fine, just let me know.)
- If the other person cannot help me right now, I am free to ask for help somewhere else.
- If no one can help me, help myself: Heart Coherence.
Collectively, we are responsible for finding ways to work together based on the recognition of common AND complementary values.
What might be a good relationship for you to look at?
What are the seemingly conflicting values? Or ways of expressing the same one? In which way might they be complementary?
If you decide to work with me, here are the conditions by which I work - Nancy Kline’s More Time To Think Ten Components of a Thinking Environment:
1. You will have my undivided Attention
2. We are Equal in basic Soul value
3. Ease makes for precise, all-encompassing thinking - I want us to be comfortable: bodily needs first!
4. I aim for mutual Appreciation: human beings are relational
5. Encouragement - it's a smoother route to any change
6. Feelings: feelings are welcome, as indicators to what really matters
7. Information: I will try to give you just what you need
8. Diversity: you can disagree with me -we all see from a different angle
9. Incisive questions - that make you (re-)think, see things broadly
10. The Place we work together in is our sacred space
Coaching concepts from the French International Coaching Federation (ICF):
• confidentiality (unless your safety is at risk)
• mutual learning (yes, me too! :)
• time-limited (boundaries allow for security)
• everything is possible (if you set your mind to it -long enough- then trust)
• ultimate freedom (on both sides)
• taking risks to formulate hypotheses (I will – feel free to, as well)
• taking the risk to succeed (new level, new problems – but we are equipped to face each level we reach)
• truth is multi-faceted (for every truth, the contrary is also true)
• humility is a strength (facing the truth: we are powerful beyond measure, AND we are part of a big whole, co-creating together, and with it)
• feet on the ground, head in the stars (dreaming is fundamental, taking care of bodily needs as well: it’s our vehicle for accessing this world)
• daring to look at truth together (accepting pain and discomfort is OK if we are in this together)
• humor and enjoyment being an integral part of the coaching process (it relaxes us enough to move into creative thinking, to find solutions with our whole emotional-rational-impulse-analysis self!)
Image credit: Vanessa Brantley Newton
The specifics of what happens when exploring emotional matters
Here are the 5 steps of emotional healing that Gael Lindefield outlines in her book, The Emotional Healing Strategy, that has helped me understand a lot of what was going on when someone was revealing their vulnerability and their conversation partner was fixing, rejecting, or numbing - hence upping the emotional display that they were trying to avoid:
- Exploration: first the person has to search for what it exactly is
- Expression: give voice/shape to the intensity of the feeling associated with the circumstances
- Comfort: get human warmth (I'm sorry, that must be really tough, I'm so happy for you, etc. = empathy)
- Compensation: get something good to compensate for the bad stuff (give yourself -or get- a bath, a training, etc.)
- Perspective: learn something as result of it - but never as a first step: you will only get more despair, anger, sadness, etc. and A LOT of resistance to you. Nothing can get in at this point, when they are supposed to be taking care of and feeling their own emotion. This is fundamental: just like with children, connect with the emotion/heart (appease them by being there with them in the emotion), then with the brain.
Books about relational and self-connection
The Intention Experiment, Lynne McTaggart
Supernatural, Joe Dispenza
Molecules of Emotion, Candace Perth
Everything Can Be Healed, Sir Martin Brofman
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, Mark Manson
The Biology of Belief, Bruce Lipton
Don't Think of an Elephant, George Lakoff
Caroline Myss, Defy Gravity
Difficult Conversations, Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen
The Holographic Universe, Michael Talbot
The Emotional Healing Strategy, Gael Lindenfield
More Time to Think, Nancy Kline
Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert
Brenée Brown, Dare to Lead
The Geography of Thought, Richard E. Nisbett
NonViolent Communication, Marshall Rosenberg
Maps to Ecstasy, Gabrielle Roth
Inspiring & Useful Website articles
Tony Robbins (in the top menu bar, click on 'help me with': here, for example -'performance' to get research-backed tips) https://www.tonyrobbins.com/productivity-performance/
Uplift for inspiring science-meets-heart articles, among other projects: https://uplift.love/category/science-of-love/
Online trainings and conference packages
Mark Walsh's Embodiment Conference: https://portal.theembodimentconference.org/
Reesma Menakem's Cultural Somatics online training https://www.resmaa.com/
HeartMath Institute for trainings on how to access the heart connection for resilience, team connection, etc. https://www.heartmath.com/
My YouTube video mix
Neuroscience, Spirituality, Diversity: the effects of Self-Compassion & Compassion in Relationships on Neuroplasticity: for a healthy, smart, joyful, loving and peaceful world!!!