Coach Approach

I've been thinking a lot lately about how rarely people inhabit their lives and the subtle ways they distance themselves from the present moment.

At Awaken, we're becoming more and more aware of what it means to be fully alive, and for me, it always comes back to being fully present, here and now, and noticing the exact moment I begin to use a story or a framework to filter my experience.

Even the language I use is telling. Do I believe myself to be carrying a client, or caring for them? Do I …

Expanding Time Is Like Expanding Love: How to Expand Your Day and Your Heart with Slowness

Some people have become obsessed with saving time. They listen to podcasts at 2x speed, eat standing up, and treat their calendars like a battlefield. I remember those days!

One afternoon, I had two phones in my two hands and a computer on my lap, attempting to set up a 20-minute meeting between a CEO in France and the US Vice President. The meeting was two months away, and finding a 20-minute window to …

My story used to be, "I'm very shy." I was afraid of speaking in public. Once, I was asked to read a poetic passage in front of a group, and I told the requester that I was too scared. She responded, "That's Ok. Thanks for being willing!"

I could feel the internal shift with her non-judging comment and her assumption of willingness. I could even feel myself become willing, and it wasn't too long after that I also felt able. Now, speaking in public is an effortless part of my day-to-day, which I…

Some people spend their lives waiting for a green light. They tell themselves they will finally step into their calling, especially if it involves leadership or showing up fully as a coach, only once they have fixed every messy part of their internal world. 

That’s certainly the way I used to live. It created a heavy burden of perpetual unreadiness and mistrust of myself. I wanted to hide my “basket case” self in favor of my “wise guru” self. Living out of that persona is destabilizing, to say …

I still remember the feeling of sitting in my early training as a coach, back in 2009. On paper, it was a live, interactive session. In reality, I sometimes felt like a ghost in the room. I've been in coach training sessions with twenty or thirty people in the space. I could have easily turned off my camera, muted my microphone, and checked out entirely.

Some days, I was in a room with up to 900 of my closest friends, struggling to pay attention to the one-directional speaker. I was sending an …

When people search for spiritual coach certification, they usually find one of two things: a long list of programs with prices and hour counts, or a vague description of what spiritual coaches do.

Neither of those tells you what actually matters when you're choosing a program. And if you're serious about this work, the difference between a good choice and a mediocre one is significant, both for your clients and for you.

I've spent 12 years training coaches. I've also spent a long time watching…

When I first started coaching, the whole coaching philosophy was night and day from what I had learned in the School of Life. I had spent years in a world of certainty, right and wrong, reward and punishment, and looking to others as authorities in my life.

In coaching, I began to experience something entirely different. I leaned into choice, agency, imagination, and possibility. That shift changed my life.

Yet as I continued growing, I realised that my early coach training was still built on …

In the landscape of professional development and coach training, an insidious narrative of growth creeps in. It is usually framed as a series of upgrades: perform better, achieve more, and finally arrive at a version of yourself that is enough.

I call this living life backwards.

What Most Coach Training Programs Miss

Some people think you need to progress along Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Once you find safety, then you can achieve belonging, which leads to success. Then happiness, followed b…

Before I started gathering people into groups, I watched my clients carry things alone.

I was known as the forgiveness coach back then. People would come into my office and share the most tender, unspoken parts of themselves. Stories they had never told anyone. Not their partners. Not their closest friends. Just me, a coach they had known for a few hours.

I kept sitting with the question: why are you telling me this when your best friend doesn't know?

Their best friend would come in the follo…

If you've been coaching for a while, and you didn't get your training through Awaken Coach Institute, you might have a very yucky problem on your hands, through no fault of your own.

This isn't my favorite kind of blog to write, because I hate even THINKING about admin and paperwork. But I hate to see you struggling with it even more, so I'm willing to put in the effort. You can thank me later. ;-)

Let's say you love coaching. You've taken the training, you have the skills, and you're ready to…