coaching Archives

Life Coaching – making meaning in times of transition

October 19, 2018

Light precedes every transition. Whether at the end of a tunnel, through a crack in the door or the flash of an idea, it is always there, heralding a new beginning.

Teresa Tsalaky

I’m offering a limited number of life coaching opportunities now! Work on creativity and self-leadership to make your dreams and plans come true.

As a Certified Life Coach with the Beautiful You Coaching Academy and with Certification in Personality Type assessment, I can help you negotiate major transition times. Whatever the change that is happening or that you desire to manifest, we all need support through challenging times. And life coaching is such a valuable investment to support you in major change and transition goals.

I focus on creativity and self-leadership in my life coaching. The women I work with have often put their creative needs and goals aside for others. Or they are working in job roles that are more like a ‘shadow career’, as Steven Pressfield describes it in Turning Pro, rather than the real thing. If you feel like you need support to get back to what you truly desire to be and do in life, I’d love to work with you.

Here’s my story of what I learnt on my transition journey to self-leadership and my creative life goals. And more on how I can support you to make meaning in times of transition to your life desires via life coaching.

Negotiating major life transitions

Working with life coaches has been a key support helping me to make meaning all the way along my two year transition journey. Even with all the experience I had as a teacher and leader in the adult vocational education sector, I needed support. We all do, especially when trying to make major change. It’s all about our identity; that’s why it’s such hard and vulnerable work. We define ourselves via certain roles in life – mother, partner, teacher, employee, leader, writer, daughter, wife. When in major life transition, we often need to look at these defining roles, reshape them and embody them and new ones new ways.

We can feel quite lost at times. In the two years of my transition journey, I have been through some major identity shifts. I worked for an organisation that was the centre of my life for over 30 years. But I knew I had to leave it and get back to my creative desires in life. Then the organisation deleted my job making me redundant anyway so it wasn’t a matter of choice. This was all very painful even if change was what I wanted.

My mother was diagnosed with incurable metastatic breast cancer just as I was embarking on my transition. I spent the majority of my time with my mum supporting her as she faced challenging health and end of life. That was beyond painful. A true journey of love, I learnt so much from my beautiful mother at this most tender of life stages.

Working with life coaches to support us

Through this time, I worked with a series of life coaches as I also became a coach and negotiated these challenges and this major shift in identity.

The first coach helped me with the first very raw part of the journey as I realised I had to make major change. We put steps in place for the broad brush of the transition – shifting to part-time work and making space for change.

A second life coach helped me as we both went on our journey of becoming a life coach. We supported each other on our life coaching and life journey and still do.

And another life coach helped me with making sure my writing was balanced with life coaching as I defined the parameters of my new life in challenging circumstances. There were many other valued life coaching supporters along the way in many shapes and forms.

How can life coaching support you?

Life coaching can be an incredible support as we move through times of change and make a path to the goals in our heart. Especially those long-term goals we have held very close and perhaps put aside.

It’s true that light precedes transition. It might be the light of our ideas, the creative future, the vision of what we want our life to look like. We have a sense of that new beginning to guide us but sometimes we need support as we shape it into reality. A life coach can act as that guiding hand to support us as we bring the light into play in a more grounded way.

Life coaching and the support and community of coaches is simply part of how I make meaning in life now. It’s especially powerful at times of major transition like experiencing redundancy, not wanting to stay where you are, wanting to start a new business around your passions or seeking more creative life options. It is not a sign of weakness; it is a sign of strength to seek support and company as we reshape our identity and structure more self-leadership into our lives.

What is life coaching?

Life coaching provides a goal oriented framework to help you achieve what you want in life. It draws from a variety of disciplines including psychology, sociology, personal development and social development. Life coaching helps you move from where you are to where you want to be through supported and guided goal-setting and action. Importantly, it’s not the same as therapy or counselling; it’s more future focused and action focused.

People who choose to work with life coaches come from a range of backgrounds and work on goals as diverse as:

making a positive career transition to a more fulfilling job or way of working
driving creative projects such as writing a book or starting a blog
becoming healthier, fitter and stronger
having positive and meaningful relationships
improving self-confidence and self-belief
creating energising and nourishing self-care routines
living an inspired and balanced life.

Life coaching can take place in person or via technology such as over the phone or via Skype or Zoom. It can take place with individuals, in groups or in workplaces.

What do I bring to coaching and where do I focus?

In the journey to become a life coach, you create a focus that reflects your uniqueness and the rich blend of what you have to offer. No two life coaches are the same!

I focus on creativity and self-leadership coaching and I bring to that: extensive experience in adult and vocational education; certification in personality type assessment; and a passion for creativity, writing and books that drives everything I do. Supporting women seeking meaning and identity through major life transitions such as I have experienced is a key priority.

With my background in leadership and creativity, I am interested in how coaching can be a form of self-leadership. Just as we can lead others and take the lead in situations, the most important form of orchestrating leadership is how we take ourselves forward and bring the pieces of our lives together. I believe everyone can shine in their own way. We just need to find the threads that pull our unique story together.

I’m keen to support you also on your journey to work on goals that bring more heart to what you do and want to do. My coaching and writing work at Quiet Writing will support you to bring the threads together to actively create your story and shine.

So how about you?

So if any of these thoughts and experiences about creativity and career, about self-leadership and feeling more wholehearted, about doing the work, are resonating with you, I’d love to work with you.

I especially work with women who:

want to be more wholehearted about the work they do or the life they lead; by this I mean, feeling more whole – like all of your important and valued parts are in play and activated, not left at the door or buried somewhere;
are trying to find their unique voice and space in their career and creative world;
have skills and experience – a body of work – they wish to take as a foundation and recast into a new vision and path;
are keen to get moving on creative projects like writing a book, getting a blog or website out into the world with their unique voice or want to craft a new creative life or business; or
want to take the steps to create the life they want and to succeed and shine.

I’d love to have a chat with you if you’d like to feel more satisfied with your life and make more informed choices about how to be creative and make a living. Or if you’re keen on getting your creative projects moving and are trying to work out how to combine creativity and career more effectively. These are areas I care so much about and can support you in.

Life Coaching with me – consult + life coaching series

Here are the Life Coaching options and offerings available to help you make meaning in times of transition.

A free initial consult

If you are considering a life coaching series or combination of options, the best place to start is a free 30-45 minute consultation chat on where you are and where you want to go. This helps to see if we are a good fit and to begin to identify key goals and possible actions.

You can go direct to this link to book a time for your free consult chat via Zoom video-conferencing. You will be asked to fill in a pre-consult questionnaire so I can learn more about you and your needs in advance of our conversation together.

Create Your Story Coaching Series

With six-sessions over three months, this coaching series helps you identify where you want to be and how to get there. In very practical goal and action-oriented stages, we move one step at a time with wholehearted, grounded support. As always with life coaching, you let me know where you want to focus! It’s your story. I’m there to guide you to help you create your story – the one you desire so deeply.

The investment in your future for this life-changing series is $330AU(around $235US) per month for 3 months. This is payable in advance each month.

Life Coaching with me – other options + offerings

There are other life coaching options and offerings available too. These options don’t need the up-front coaching consult as we get straight into the program! Just contact me via terri@quietwriting.com in the first instance. After an email chat, we might find the free consult chat is a good place to start if you want to combine options or are not sure where to start.

Personality Stories Coaching Package

Understand your personality and psychological type preferences as a tool for self-leadership! This package includes a personality type assessment, a Jung/Myers-Briggs personality based e-course which includes an introduction to work by Carl Jung, Isabel Myers-Briggs and Katherine Myers. You will also go through identifying your best-fit type through assessment of your type, understanding your strengths and weaknesses, knowing your preferred cognitive functions and less preferred functions.

As a life coach certified in Psychological Type assessment, I take you on a deep-dive journey that will change your self-understanding and potentially, your life. I know, because it radically changed mine! You can read more here on that journey.

The Personality Stories package includes:

Personality assessment online: Complete the Majors Personality Type Inventory (Majors PTI™) online assessment. This helps you begin to identify your Jung/Myers-Briggs personality type.
Self-paced online course on personality type: An online course (about 3 hours to complete) on Personality Type so you can understand type and your preferences.
A copy of the book You’ve Got Personality by Mary McGuiness, sent to you wherever you are in the world.
Coaching debrief to work through your results: A 90 minute 1:1 face to face coaching session via Zoom to debrief your results and learning from the ecourse. You receive your Majors Personality Type assessment report in this session. We check whether your assessment result is your best-fit Type through discussing your results and preferences. We work through any questions and set inspiring goals and actions to take this knowledge forward in your life.
Quiet Writing summary: Once your best-fit personality type is identified via theh debrief, you receive a Quiet Writing summary of your type preferences. This includes key points about your personality preferences, further reading, tarot connections, tips for managing stress and how to shine your personal entrepreneurial style in your life. There are also journal prompts to work further with what the learning brings up for you.
Email support for 2 weeks after to follow up on any questions and learnings.

The investment for this package is $350AU (around $250US) as a special ‘first release’ price. Let me know via email terri@quietwriting.com if you are interested in being included in the first limited enrolment.

I’m also preparing an exciting group coaching offering in Sydney that covers similar territory. Learning about personality type with others in a group setting can be so much fun. Email me to be the first to know of this program!

Pathfinding one-off Coaching Session

This package aims to help work your way through specific options such as study, courses, becoming a coach or blending your passions into a new business. If you are interested in coaching – either becoming a coach or exploring other specific options, then a pathfinding coaching session might work for you. This involves a brief pre-coaching questionnaire, a 90 minute chat via videoconference or teleconference to explore potential path options where I can share my experiences with you, email access to me for 2 weeks after, book recommendations/links and customised resources to guide your path (as required). It is targeted to solve specific life path dilemmas.

Cost = $250AU (around $180US)

Certified Coach for Life Coaches in training

Just a reminder too for life coaches in training that as a Certified Life Coach with the Beautiful You Coaching Academy, I can help you with your own pathway towards certification as a life coach with the Academy. A six session coaching series with me can count towards your own certification pathway as well.

I can especially help you with:

writing + creativity – like getting your book draft done, working on blogging, developing a writing practice, having a more creatively inspired life;
enhanced self-leadership for a more wholehearted life – whatever that looks like for you;
personality type assessment combined with your coaching series to understand your personality strengths as a coach, entrepreneur and creative.

Praise and where to contact me:

If you’d life to read what others have said from working with me, you can read more about their experiences here.

You can read more about working with me here.

Please contact me:

via email: terri@quietwriting.com
or via direct message on social media – via Facebook or Instagram if we are already connected

In practical terms, I’m in Australia but you can be anywhere in the world. We would work via the technology based service Zoom for our sessions. You don’t need any special software or setup!

I would love to work with you now or into the future in Quiet Writing Coaching!

Please feel free to share with anyone who you think might benefit from this opportunity. Download this quote and image to put in front of you or save it to Pinterest!

Keep in touch

Quiet Writing is on Facebook – Please visit here and ‘Like’ to keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. There are regular posts on coaching, books, tarot, intuition, influence, passion, creativity, productivity, writing, voice, introversion and personality type.

Subscribe via email (see the link at the top and below) to make sure you receive updates from Quiet Writing and its passions. This includes life coaching, writing, personality type and other connections to help express your unique voice in the world.

If you enjoyed this post, please share via your preferred social media channel – links are below.

You might also enjoy:

Your body of work: the greatest gift of transition to a bright new life

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Shining a quiet light: working the gifts of introversion

Become a Life Coach + live your change

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I’m a Creativity & Self-leadership Coach, a Writer & more

October 2, 2018

We round off our #quietwriting IG challenge journey by claiming who and what we are: I’m a Creativity + Self-leadership Coach and a Writer, skilled in Personality Type assessment. Read on to find out more about what this means – and what it might mean for you!

Use the #quietwriting hashtag across platforms as a way to create, connect and link us together on our ongoing journey to draft, process, create, make space for writing and other creativity and otherwise live a wholehearted creative life. Read on to discover more and connect with creative others about claiming who and what we are.

Claiming who and what we are

I’ve just received my beautiful new business cards developed with Stephey Baker of Marked by the Muse. You can see my Quiet Writing logo and essence phrase: ‘Journeying deep into wholehearted stories’ and my colour palette. I’ll be integrating my logo, colour palette and essence phrase into Quiet Writing and all its aspects over time. And I’ll share more with you on the process of developing this and what it means for my business and life soon.

In working on this, I had to work out what I stand for, what I am, in this new creative life I’ve carved out. I had to work out what to put on my business cards to communicate this. It’s taken many hours and days of learning and skill development. In fact, it’s taken years of creating and honing my body of work and then taking it forward in new ways. Sometimes we need to step forward and claim who and what we are, like on our business cards and via our websites.

Our ‘About me’ page, our logo, our essence phrase, stating who and what we are – these are some of the hardest pieces of work we can do as creative entrepreneurs.

So I’m a Creativity & Self-leadership Coach, a Writer and a Personality Type Practitioner skilled in Personality Type Assessment. Settling on this took a very long time. It involved many elements including:

becoming a life coach
being able to call myself a writer
skilling up and practising in Jung/Myers-Briggs personality type assessment
working out how to blend personality type with life coaching
working out my coaching niche as creativity and self-leadership for women in transition
encouraging wholehearted self-leadership in myself and others.

Here are some additional thoughts on each of the puzzle pieces and how they might help you.

I’m a Creativity and Self-leadership Coach

Becoming a life coach was a critical piece in my transition journey – one of three key pillars. I chose to study with the Beautiful You Life Coaching Academy. As part of this journey, it was important to identify our niche and what makes us different from each other. I needed to work out who my ideal client is, what their needs are and how I can help them.

My main modus operandi personally and in my coaching is creativity. Creative is one of my five Core Desired Feelings. It’s what I choose to do each day across all of my life including coaching and writing. It was a core thread in my body of work over time too. I focused on creativity and innovation as a leader in the role I played in the government adult vocational education sector until recently.

Leadership is a key piece of my body of work too: being a leader and working on myself as a leader. I realised as I made this shift to being a coach that all of the leadership skills I developed over time apply equally to self-leadership. Leading yourself first is a critical foundation of leadership.

So taking my body of work in these areas forward, I am interested in helping women going through transition especially at mid-life with creativity and self-leadership. I love supporting women to connect with their creativity, get the creative works of their heart out in the world. And to have the self-leadership, self-understanding, confidence, skills and productivity tools to make it happen.

I’m a writer

So just why is calling ourselves a writer so hard? Of all the titles I’m claiming in this piece, ‘writer’ has the most mystique and baggage attached to it. I am not sure why we put the role of writer on a pedestal but probably because it’s something we aspire to.

This piece, The Subtle Art of Not Writing, helped me move through that blockage. Writing it made me think through a whole raft of things: resistance, getting out of our own way, making things manageable, shifting our contexts, small tweaks, tricking ourselves, recognising our body of work over time and self-belief.

Claiming the title of writer has been an important step in this transition process. Getting into the habit of writing more consistently via blog, morning pages, book draft, NaNoWriMo. going on a writing retreat in Vietnam and embracing writing as my authentic heart has been so empowering. I’ve seen my work out in the world in many ways now, here on Quiet Writing and via my featured writing elsewhere.

A combination of keeping in practice, honing my voice and crafting pieces for publication means claiming the role of writer is much easier than it has been in the past. Though truth be told, I’ve always been a writer. Embracing the writing life has made it feel a title I am more comfortable with claiming. Here I am writing at the beautiful An Villa embracing the writing life on retreat recently. This picture by Nigel Rowles and used with permission and thanks.

I’m a Personality Type Practitioner

A key piece in my transition pillars was becoming a Jung/Myers-Briggs Personality Type Practitioner. This is because understanding my INTJ personality made all the difference in my life. I’ve learnt to understand and work my introversion, my intuition, my thinking and my judging skills. And to appreciate how the mix of these preferences is something to honour and value in my life. I’ve learnt to embrace my Introverted Intuition as a dominant preference and gift. I understand Extraverted Sensing is my least preferred way of operating. By working on the least preferred, I can get more balance and be more wholehearted.

I see knowing your personality type and preferences as a key part of self-leadership and self-understanding. So I skilled up over time in personality type assessment and integrate it with life coaching. My offerings and writing in this space focus on helping you truly know and understand your personality type. Through a deep process of personality type assessment, an ecourse and coaching debrief with me, you can achieve insights for to guide your wholehearted journey. We also look at aspects like coaching style, entrepreneurship, creativity, stress and resilience through the lens of personality type. It’s such a powerful tool.

Understanding your personality type

If you’d like to work more on understanding your personality type, I’ll be rolling out my offerings in the personality space in mid October. It’s not just about introvert and extrovert aspects though these are important. You learn about your preferences around sensing and intuition; thinking and feeling; and perceiving and judging as well.

The Personality Stories package includes:

personality type assessment online
an online course on personality preferences so you can understand your type
a coaching package to work on deep-diving into the wholehearted story of your personality.
a Quiet Writing personality type summary, and
email support for two weeks after.

Personality Stories coaching package

Here’s the detail of the coaching package. You receive:

Personality assessment online: Complete the Majors Personality Type Inventory (Majors PTI™) online assessment. This helps you to begin to identify your Jung/Myers-Briggs 4-letter personality type.
Self-paced online course on personality type: Working through the self-paced Personality Stories ecourse. It takes about 3 hours (max) to complete this short online course. I hope you will find it fascinating learning about Carl Jung, his followers and their rich work on personality type.
Coaching debrief to work through your results: Once you complete the ecourse, we have a 90 minute 1:1 face to face coaching session via Zoom to debrief your results. You receive your Majors Personality Type assessment report, and the four letter code arrived at, in this session. The coaching debrief focuses on checking that your assessment result is your true or best-fit Type and discussing your results. We work through any questions and set inspiring goals and actions to take this knowledge forward and embed it in your life.
Quiet Writing summary: Once your true personality type is confirmed from the coaching session, you will receive a Quiet Writing summary of the key aspects of your personality type to take forward. This includes links to further reading, tarot connections and suggestions for managing stress and fostering creativity in your life.
Email contact for 2 weeks after to follow up on any questions and learnings.

The investment for this package is $350AU as a special ‘first release’ price. Just let me know via email at terri@quietwriting.com if you are interested in being included in the first limited October enrolment.

I’m grateful for connections via #quietwriting

So I welcome your comments here or on social media. I look forward to seeing #quietwriting images that share thoughts and open up dialogue on quiet in your life. Just share an image on Instagram using the tag #quietwriting. Here are the prompts we worked through for the challenge in September to give you an idea.

And the #quietwriting hashtag continues beyond the week of the challenge, so use it anytime to create and connect. You can learn more here about #quietwriting

Just a reminder of the key points:

Quiet Writing is about the strength that comes from working steadily and without fanfare in writing and other spheres to create, coalesce, influence and connect.
Hashtags are such a fabulous way to gather, finding our creative kindred souls and inspiration online.
On Instagram, you can now follow hashtags as well as individual profiles. So follow #quietwriting now and into the future to connect around creativity and your quiet work, writing and making art.
You can head on over to the #quietwriting hashtag on Instagram or Facebook or other social media anytime and see what’s popping up.
You could also post on your own profile on Facebook as well using the hashtag.
Often we write quietly, behind closed doors or in busy cafes, privately. Let’s shine a light behind the scenes and capture the process of writing and creativity in action, wherever we are.

Get on board with #quietwriting!

These are just some ideas and they will evolve as we all contribute. It doesn’t have to be all about writing – it can be any form of creativity. Nor do you need to be an introvert; we all need quiet writing time to get creative work done.

Ongoing, I’ll feature my favourite images from the tag here and on Instagram and Facebook so share your images for the chance to be featured!

So join the #quietwriting party and let us know what you are up to! Who knows what creative connections you might make to support you on your journey or inspire your next creation?

Welcome your comments and images to inspire and connect our creativity online as we progress our works in progress!

Keep in touch & free ebook on the ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’

You can work with me to help reset your creativity and wholehearted self-leadership. Free 30-45 minute coaching consults chats are available so please get in touch at terri@quietwriting.com to talk further. I’d love to be a guide to help you create with spirit and heart in your own unique way. Consults available now for an October coaching start!

You can download my free 94-page ebook on the 36 Books that Shaped my Story – just sign up with your email address in the box to the right or below. You will also receive updates from Quiet Writing and its passions. This includes personality type, coaching, creativity, writing, tarot and other connections to help express your unique voice in the world.

Quiet Writing is on Facebook and Instagram – keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community.

If you enjoyed this post, please share via your preferred social media channel – links are below.

You might also enjoy:

Personality, story and introverted intuition

How knowing your authentic heart can make you shine

Your body of work: the greatest gift for transition to a bright new life

#quietwriting – growing creative community and connection

Practices and tools to support creative productivity, writing and mindset

Creative and connected – on the special value of self-leadership

The Journey to Write Here: My Wholehearted Story

Puzzle image via pexels.com

coaching transition work life

Become a Life Coach + live your change

September 21, 2018

You must be the change you wish to be in the world.

Mahatma Gandhi

I’m excited to share my journey to become a life coach with the Beautiful You Coaching Academy + opportunities if you also want to become a life coach!

As a certified life coach, affiliate and ambassador for the Beautiful You Coaching Academy, I am truly delighted to share my experiences with you.

My key message is to be the change you wish to be.

Truly live it! And a fabulous pathway to this is to embark on the personal development journey to become a life coach. In this way, you can support the growth of others, as you beautifully enhance your own.

My journey to become a coach

It’s hard to believe it’s more than two years since I started on the Beautiful You Coaching Academy Life Coaching course journey. I remember receiving my learning resources with the most gorgeous, handwritten welcome note from lead trainer and CEO, Julie Parker.

I identified becoming a life coach as a key part of my transition from 30-plus years as a teacher and leader in the adult vocational education sector. For a long time, I’d yearned for more freedom and time for creativity, especially to write the books I desired to write.

I had already started to make a plan to leave and start a new life. But a particular incident at work one day was like a kick in the guts, accelerating my transition journey. A message delivered in a meeting left me stunned, staring at the blue sky outside, unable to participate any further. It left me reeling. In essence, it was saying that after all I had invested in the organisation, I was no longer valued. I cried all the way home and hardly slept for days. Unable to work the following week, I spent days recovering. In that time, I began to plan my new future.

The first thing I did the morning after the incident was reach out to my friend, Victoria, who was a life coach. Feeling very raw, I asked her to help me chart a course to create a new life. Soon after, I started coaching with Victoria, then began part-time job-share arrangements at work to make space for transition. Before too long, it became clear that a new life plan was not a choice, it was a necessity. Redundancy was imminent – the organisation was also headed in different directions and I truly was not valued.

Fast forward to now

Since that time, I completed the Beautiful You Life Coaching course and honed my life coaching skills through a series of deep engagements with clients. Building on my skills as a teacher and leader, I’m now a practising Certified Life Coach focused on creativity and self-leadership, especially for women in transition. Women who are undergoing experiences like I have been through. I am an accredited Personality Type assessor and practitioner, as well as a writer and intuitive tarot reader. These are all skills I chose to learn or deepen as I went on this journey – my passions and loves.

Life coaching is linked to writing and teaching as key aspects of my life. Writing is my creative focus and raison d’être, but teaching and supporting people to reach their potential is also what I have engaged in deeply through-out my work life. I’ve been a coach and mentor in the workplace and worked with coaches in the workplace as a leader. So when the time came to leave my job, my transition plan had writing and coaching as two core elements complementing each other.

Becoming a life coach became a key pillar of this plan for a new life. It’s a skill and personal journey you can integrate with many other life skills and passions as you seek to shape a new life and be of service to others.

Working with life coaches + life transition

I can’t say enough about the value of being a life coach and working with life coaches to support you on key transition journeys. Working with coaches has been a key support along this two-year transition journey, helping me to make meaning. My coach, Victoria, helped me start my journey at that very tender time when I knew I had to make plans to leave. As well, on the coaching journey with Beautiful You, every trainee has the opportunity to buddy coach with a fellow trainee. Below is a picture of me (on the left) with my gorgeous and inspiring coaching buddy, Jeanette. We shared powerful and supportive learning and coaching experiences as we mutually embarked on this adventure.

My coaching needs focused on strength and self-care as I was also supporting my mother who was very unwell with cancer. Sadly, she passed away at the end of last year after a very difficult time. I focused on making sure my self-care and wellness strategies were in place when life was tough. When I was caring for another just as I was making a major life transition.

Now, I am much healthier and stronger, swimming in the ocean a few times a week and back to yoga after a break. I also worked with a certified Beautiful You coach on my writing to make sure it was a priority on this journey. I went on a writing and yoga retreat in beautiful Hoi An, Vietnam.

After two years on this journey, working with a number of coaches, studying with Beautiful You, becoming a Personality Type practitioner and establishing both my coaching and writing practice, life looks very different. I’d like to help you make life look different too – so read on!

Why become a life coach?

Life coaching is an incredible support as we move through times of change and make a path to achieve our goals. Especially those long term goals we have held very close. Life coaching and the support and community of coaches is simply part of how I make meaning in life now.

It is especially powerful at times of major transition and creativity like: experiencing redundancy, not wanting to stay where you are, starting a business around your passions, writing a book or seeking more creative life options.

I struggled as I wrote this piece to separate out the journey to become a life coach from the fabulous support and experience that life coaching has afforded me. They are in essence all part of the same journey. It becomes a skill you learn but also a mindset you live. My learning to become a coach coincided with other deep life experiences that involved holding space for others at critical times. My skills as a life coach helped me navigate those times with self-leadership and strength.

Some of the reasons to become a life coach are that it is:

something you can do from anywhere, a flexible skill that is infinitely portable.
work that you can dial up and down, in combination with other life priorities and work streams.
a skill that integrates with other life passions: Life coaches work in all kinds of niches reflecting their uniqueness.
a rich and ongoing journey of personal development.
a way to connect with other like-minded people interested in self-development and deep connection.
focused on being in service, using your skills, knowledge and experience to support others.
a rich skill-set for all of life: mindfulness, listening, asking questions, holding space, supporting, encouraging and cheering others on.

Why Beautiful You Coaching Academy?

As a graduate, affiliate and ambassador for the Beautiful You Coaching Academy, I wholeheartedly recommend the Academy’s Life Coaching Course. The many positives of the program and experience include:

solid theory and practice, well-structured and professionally managed with the ability to study online from across the world;
exceptional leadership and teaching via CEO and lead trainer Julie Parker and her team, all skilled, successful and experienced life coaches;
a rich, diverse, supportive and welcoming community of coaches within the Beautiful You network;
the ability to learn how to build and grow your own coaching business you can operate from anywhere in the world and with a global reach;
an academy that supports and promotes the work of its coaches, providing opportunities to shine and extend;
the opportunity to pursue a certified coach pathway; and
making many new deep friendships and connections across the world via a common interest in personal growth.

Become a life coach with my support

So, I am so excited to be offering a number of coaching opportunities for you to become a coach as an affiliate of the Beautiful You Coaching Academy.

Firstly, if you know you would like to sign up for the first Beautiful You Coaching Course in 2020, don’t delay. It’s 80% full already and places fill quickly.

As an affiliate, I endorse the course and receive an affiliate payment for providing this recommendation. You have no additional costs in enrolling and there is an exciting benefit for you as well!

You can read further below about the opportunity to work with me also for a 6-session coaching series at no cost to you as well.

You can find out more about the course at the Beautiful You Coaching Academy website here.

Importantly, if you wish to access the 6-session coaching session with me at no cost to you, make sure when you complete the order form to enrol in the course, that you enter MY NAME – TERRI CONNELLAN – (first and last) in the CODE field of the order page. This will link you to me and my offer. So easy!

Important Note: If you enter my name in any other area than the one instructed, (which is the code field at your enrolment stage – please see graphic below), or not at all at the exact time of your enrolment, you will not be able to receive my affiliate offerings. This is not something that can be amended at a later time and so please be careful at your sign up stage to do this as I want to be able to support you on your coaching journey!

Thanks to @annamarialocke for this image!

Create Your Deeper Story life coaching series

So more on my offer!

In choosing to become a life coach with Beautiful You, I would love to offer you the opportunity to work with me as your coach! This is via a ‘Create Your Deeper Story’ Coaching series of 6 sessions over a 3 month period on areas important to you and your life path. Just remember to email Beautiful You with my name BEFORE you enrol.

The value of this investment in your future for this life-changing series is $330AU per month, a total of $990AU over 3 months. But it will provided at no cost to you. You only need to make sure you enter my name at the CODE field in the Course Order/enrolment form (as above) and remain in study to the end of the refund period.

The ‘Create Your Deeper Story’ Coaching series helps you identify where you want to be and how to get there in very practical goal and action-oriented steps. One step at a time with wholehearted, grounded support and practicality. I focus on creativity and self-leadership coaching but you let me know exactly where you want to focus! It’s your story. Skilled in personality type assessment, I weave personality type knowledge deep into my coaching and offer special deep-dives into this area as a separate opportunity.

As a Certified Life Coach with Beautiful You, I can help you with your own pathway towards certification as a life coach with the Academy. A six-session coaching series with me can count towards your own certification pathway as well.

Where to contact me:

So I hope you are excited by what all of this means for you!

To become a Life Coach, you can enrol straight away via the Beautiful You Coaching Academy Course Page (make sure you include my name on the form as above!) or you can contact me if you have any questions:

via email: terri@quietwriting.com
or via direct message on social media – via Facebook or Instagram if we are already connected

I would love to support you to become a life coach and to work with you!

Please feel free to share with anyone who you think might benefit from this opportunity.

Keep in touch

Quiet Writing is on Facebook – Please visit here and ‘Like’ to keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. There are regular posts on coaching, books, tarot, intuition, influence, passion, creativity, productivity, writing, voice, introversion and personality type.

If you enjoyed this post, please share via your preferred social media channel – links are below.

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How I fulfilled my vision to become a Personality Type Coach

Your body of work: the greatest gift of transition to a bright new life

Coaching goals and the value of being a healthy creative

Shining a quiet light: working the gifts of introversion

20 practical ways of showing up and being brave and helpful

Creative practices in my tool-kit

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Coaching goals and the value of being a healthy creative

March 22, 2018

Coaching goals can be many and varied with surprising connections. Learning the value of being a healthy creative has taught me about resilience and strength.

Coaching goals and connections

Working in a coaching series with coach buddy, Jeanette Buchanan, as part of my Beautiful You Coaching Academy program this time last year, I found myself setting a key goal around being healthy. My goal was to ‘feel stronger and sexier’. I was keen to tap into and learn from Jeanette’s love of exercise and passion for physical fitness.

At that time, I wasn’t moving a lot. I was just getting back into walking, knowing I needed to be exercising more and building my strength. Coaching became a search for the right type of exercise as a form of self-care and personal resilience.

I was going through some tough times in my transition journey. With plans in place to leave a long-term job role, my life changed completely as I supported my mother who was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer.

I was as surprised as anyone that the coaching goals I focused on were about exercise and building strength. As a creative and writer, it’s easy to think only in terms of those aspects of life – creativity and getting ideas and words down. But to be our best creative selves, we need to be strong and healthy in body and in mind. Going through the journey of being a carer with my mother taught me so much about the value of self-care as we care for others.

Through my coaching experience, I realized the value of coaching goals about movement, strength and health as central to my well-being and life as a creative and supporter of others. When these areas of our lives are in a stronger place, we are more wholehearted and better prepared for managing whatever comes our way.

Swimming and exercise goals

In my work in my life coaching series with Jeanette, I opened up the door to exploring the exercise I loved as a child and young adult. Through free-writing, I revisited how much I loved swimming, also yoga, tai chi and dancing. But swimming shone through as something to get back to. I wrote:

Swimming is something I also enjoy though I haven’t done it for a while. I don’t like the chemicals and chlorine and pool side of it so this turns me off a bit. And I’ve never really seen the beach as a place to do laps as such. But that can change. I realise the benefits of swimming and it could be good for my back and body at this time.

Just opening up that door seemed to work wonders as it often does with coaching and listening to our inner wisdom.

One day just after I wrote this, exactly a year ago now, I was out walking along the beach in my village and bumped into a friend who had just been swimming in the bay. He told me about a group of local swimmers who swam Monday, Wednesday and Saturday mornings in the sea where I live. I didn’t know about this group and it sounded exciting. My friend took me to coffee with the swimming group that morning and introduced me, telling them all I was joining the group. And I embraced it all wholeheartedly.

Finding the best exercise for us

I’ve written here about 10 amazing life lessons from swimming in the sea and what it has taught me. Swimming is the perfect exercise for me. Writing about my relationship with different forms of exercise as part of coaching helped me get back to something I have always loved. But I’d become disconnected from it and had to rediscover this love.

Here’s a picture of me when I was little in my swimmers in what I now recognize as my natural environment – swimming in rivers and the sea.

I had forgotten how much I loved swimming as a child. Forgotten too that I even used to teach young kids to swim to share my love. I’ve also lived beside mountain rivers and relished the peace and calm from swimming there.

And here’s a picture of me as I donned my first ever wetsuit at the age of 55 and kept swimming through winter last year, rekindling this love and feeling stronger all the time.

Being in movement and keeping healthy through swimming has become a critical mainstay in being a healthy creative. Finding the right exercise that I love has been paramount. As Stephanie Stokes Oliver says in ‘Seven Soulful Secrets’:

The key to staying motivated is to find an activity that you enjoy doing.

This is so true in my experience. Swimming to me is no longer a chore or challenge. I’m really disappointed when, for some reason, I can’t go. I love it so much and the feeling when I dive in and start swimming among fish, breathing deeply in and out is the most calming and meditative of spaces. It helps me feel I can manage so much.

Celebrating exercise milestones

I celebrated 12 months of swimming in the sea with a ferry jump swim yesterday. This meant catching the local ferry out to the middle of the bay in our swimmers, flippers, swim mask and snorkel. All quite hilarious – then jumping off the ferry into the bay and swimming back. The weather and water were both wild and it was a tough one kilometre plus swim in a strong swell pushing against us.

But it was exhilarating. I felt so alive as I pushed my boundaries and could feel my resilience, strength, courage and calm from 12 months of swimming. I am so much stronger, fitter and hell, maybe even sexier? It’s certainly helped me to weather so much with courage and adaptability. It was great to celebrate this exercise and resilience milestone in a way that embodied what it taught me.

Being a healthy creative – what it has taught me

Being stronger in this way has taught me so much about the value of being a healthy creative. If we are going to write books, run entrepreneurial businesses and launch creative programs to support others, we need to be strong in body and mind.

Swimming in the sea has taught me to be in the moment. Each day I swim is different – the weather, the water, the fish and the currents. The beach is different each day and so am I, in terms of what is happening to me and how I am feeling. Through breathing and moving through whatever circumstances I face in the water, I have learnt the resilience of moving through each day with strength.

Over the past year, I’ve complemented swimming with walking, yoga, morning pages, journaling, coaching, intuitive work with tarot, blogging and writing longer length pieces such as my 36 Books free ebook. All these practices have helped me to be a healthy creative.

All of this has helped me to realise that being a healthy creative is about sustainability and fitness for the long haul. It’s no easy task to write a book, as I have found as I reached the 80,000-word mark in my ‘Wholehearted – self-leadership for women in transition’ book draft this week!

Being fitter and stronger, getting exercise, being in nature, breathing deeply and learning about managing different conditions have all been outcomes of swimming and exercise that have helped me reach my creativity and writing goals. They have been integral to helping me get those words down.

Coaching clients’ experiences

As I have worked with creative coaching clients, I have found that goals about exercise and being in movement often arise and support creativity goals. It’s been wonderful to support clients to find their own special kind of exercise and movement that supports their resilience and creativity.

It’s not always a straightforward journey as some of my clients have found. Perhaps it’s because, as writers and creatives, we are often introverts and book lovers. Our natural habitat often includes features like a desk, a computer, a notebook, a cafe (and coffee), artwork and plenty of books. We might relish the outdoors and nature. But it’s easy to get stuck, ironically by our own creativity, and not get out the door into any form of stretching ourselves through exercise.

Sylvia’s journey

I worked with the wonderfully creative and inspiring Sylvia Barnowski on her creativity goals and we found ourselves working on exercise. Sylvia sums it up this way:

After our initial meeting, I realized that it would be a good idea to use coaching to start working on something I would describe as a “lost cause”. I was struggling with this goal for the past few years and I actually started believing that I won’t be able to achieve much. So, I added a third goal – exercising. I knew if I could do even the smallest progress on this goal – it would be something really big for me. Adding this third goal felt like a big shift, raising the bar for myself and for Terri.

After weeks of defeat and trying various things, I finally found an exercise class that my body loved. It was challenging but it felt really good. That was a huge change, seeing myself going to the class every week and being excited about it.

You can read more about Sylvia’s journey of coaching with me here. I was so excited to support Sylvia through her own ‘learning to love exercise’ journey. Finding a way to move that felt right and supported other goals was pivotal. It was fabulous to see how this goal helped ignite and complement Sylvia’s personal and professional creative practice goals.

Sylvia Barnowski

The Healthy Writer

I recently read The Healthy Writer by Joanna Penn and Dr Euan Lawson and will post a full review here in the next few weeks. This book, co-written to reflect writing, personal and GP perspectives, traverses all aspects of writing and self-care including exercise, writing practices, back pain, RSI and mental health.

As my Goodreads review summarises:

Excellent read on writing and self-care by indie author and creative Joanna Penn and GP Dr Euan Lawson. I listened to it as an audiobook which was valuable and found it was like being prompted to review my writing practices and approaches by wise and gentle coaches. Plenty of practical advice on a range of health issues including back issues, RSI, mental health, fitness and practices for the creative long haul. Recommended reading/listening to sharpen your own health regime and writing practices to ensure you are fit for creativity and life generally for the long haul.

I look forward to a deeper dive on this book with you soon given the importance of these issues for our health and well-being as creatives.

How about you?

So here are some tips if you are thinking about your health as a creative and exploring some exercise, movement and wellbeing practices to support your writing and creative goals:

Write about the exercise you loved as a child and see what comes up.
Journal about what you are doing now to exercise and what would make your heart sing.
Reflect on the practices that support you as a creative and see where build movement in more.
Read ‘The Healthy Writer’ – available as an audiobook and a great read in this form.
Commit to doing some form of exercise in the next week, even if it is as simple as walking a few days a week for 20 minutes just to get moving. And build from there.
Find a class that attracts you – yoga, tai chi, exercise, pilates – and enjoy learning from others to get you going with your own practice.

And if you’d like to explore these areas as you choose to journey deeper into your wholehearted journey, I’d love to work with you. I’m currently open for free 30-45 minute consultations via Zoom or Skype to see where you might like to explore further in a coaching series with me. It can be a fabulous and life-changing step, so I encourage you to reach out if it’s calling you.

Here’s where I swim, enjoying the beautiful energy it brings to me. All best wishes to you as you explore possible coaching goals and the value of being a healthy creative.

Photo by David Kennedy Photography

Feature image via pexels.com

Keep in touch & free ebook on the ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’

You can work with me to help tap into that inner wisdom and magic guidance. Free 30-45 minute coaching consults chats are available in March + April for an April/May coaching start so please get in touch at terri@quietwriting.com to talk further. I’d love to be a guide alongside to help you conduct creativity and magic with spirit and heart in your own unique way.

Quiet Writing is on Facebook and Instagram – keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community.

If you enjoyed this post, please share via your preferred social media channel – links are below.

You might also enjoy:

Creative practice in my tool-kit to make the most of this year’s energies

Seeking wisdom in water and elsewhere

Grief and pain can be our most important teachers

Your body of work – the greatest gift for transition to a bright new life

Joy – 18 inspiring quotes on enjoying what you do and love

coaching personality and story planning & productivity

Creative and connected #12 The courage to show up

September 15, 2017

Courage starts by showing up and letting ourselves be seen.

Brené Brown, Daring Greatly

It’s Quiet Writing’s first blogiversary so I’m sharing thoughts on what I’ve enjoyed this week and over time on the courage to show up and be seen.

One year ago, on 13 September 2016, I hit the publish button with a welcome post on Quiet Writing. I’d been writing for six years before on my previous blog but it was time to step up. I wanted to refocus on my core values of being:

creative, intuitive, flowing, poetic and connected.

And this past year has been about weaving these values into everything I do. As I reach a one-year milestone at Quiet Writing, I’m thinking about what it means to show up here and elsewhere.

Showing up at Quiet Writing and elsewhere this year

The whole world changed this past year. Showing up for me has meant learning a new way to live. My primary role has been supporting and caring for my mother who is very unwell. That’s been a new experience of showing up, day in and day out, in ways I’ve never known before. It’s been emotional and has required digging deep.

At the same time, I’m working through a major life transition from leader and government employee of 30 years, to being a writer and life coach. I knew I needed to make this shift and then as I started, everything changed. This has involved all kinds of showing up – learning new skills, valuing my body of work, writing consistently and believing in myself in a new way. It’s taken place in an environment where I support my beautiful mother as the first priority.

In all this, I’ve had to focus on self-care too, learning how to be resilient and strong in this shifting landscape. I’ve had to learn to make time for myself – to rest, to swim, to plan a different future. And working with intuition has been important too even if it feels a vague thing to be doing at times.

I had one plan and circumstances delivered – and continue to deliver – a whole different scenario. It’s been a year of learning on all fronts – about myself and about what showing up and doing the work means. Certainly having the courage to be vulnerable and be seen has been a critical aspect of my learning and writing here. It’s also time to reflect on the need to be flexible in how we show up.

So with all this, here are some thoughts and resources on having the courage to show up and be seen.

Podcasts on what it means to show up

Scott Stabile on the Rawness of Real Life – on The Secret Library Podcast with Caroline Donahue

I love it that when I’m thinking about something like ‘showing up’ and writing about it, it pops up in my life in various ways. This podcast celebrates the release of Scott Stabile’s new book, ‘Big Love: The Power of Living with a Wide-Open Heart‘.

It’s a fabulous conversation and around the 17-minute mark, there’s an exchange on showing up and fear that really spoke to me. Scott says:

…what I found was that every day showing up at the computer was an exercise in just moving forward with your fear.

He talks about how fear is always showing up as well and how we need to learn to work with it. He suggests the best way to put fear in its rightful place is through action:

Action assuages fear.

There was also a valuable takeaway on how showing up means different things for each of us. We all have our own unique ways of working. Doing the work and sitting down to write or create is central to it, but we all do this in different ways. We need to honour our own process and the ways of showing up that work for us. It might be working every day at a certain time or in a stretch of intense time. Perhaps we write in a cafe, at home, at night or while we’re commuting and it might be dictating to a machine, hand-writing, typing or speaking to someone else. But it’s all valid and our own rhythms and processes, so let’s celebrate and not be so damn hard on ourselves.

Thanks to Caroline and Scott for a fabulous chat and I look forward to reading Big Love!

Show up as if you’re already where you want to be – Jen Carrington, Make It Happen podcast

This short (8:41) podcast is a pep-talk from creative coach, Jen Carrington, on her mantra of “showing up as if you’re already where you want to be in your creative work and life”. It looks at how to honour this in your work by shifting mindset, changing practices and modifying the stories you tell yourself and others. Self-care is an important factor too in “fuelling your hustle”. It’s a powerful burst of inspiration to help you show up in your life and work.

Who gets to decide if you’re a legitimate artist – Mark Nepo with Elizabeth Gilbert, Magic Lessons

Ths podcast shifted my thinking enormously about external validation and who or what I am waiting for to feel valid. It’s a soulful conversation on how we can limit ourselves with this waiting. It illustrates that embracing and expressing our creativity is the best way to move forward. Again, fear of rejection emerges as a key factor to challenge!

Books and reading notes: My reading week

In line with showing up with reading more productively and my accountability here, I’m reading a few books concurrently. I haven’t finished any lately though am making progress on all. I’m reading:

Sharon Blackie’s If Women Rose Rooted: The Journey to Authenticity and Belonging (paperback)
Spitting Blood: The History of Tuberculosis by Helen Bynum (ebook)
Write. Publish. Repeat. (The No Luck Required Guide to Self-publishing Success) by Sean Platt and Johnny B Truant with David Wright (audiobook).

Getting my own ebook ’36 Books that Shaped my Story: Reading as Creative Influence’ out into the world has been a big and satisfying priority!

I also received a Kindle Paperwhite for my birthday recently so I’m looking forward to reading more via this device. It’s so lovely to read on, managing the eyestrain and screen impacts. It also means having access to books at reasonable prices including those of indie authors! Plus it’s better for the environment, easier to carry and helps with managing space in my library.

Book and blog notes on the courage to show up

In How do you show up? Teresa Cooley, Executive Director of the Center for Courage and Renewal talks about showing up in the light of recent and current natural disasters. She says:

The only thing we can control in the face of nature is how we show up. This kind of courage usually doesn’t take thinking about. It’s simply what we do. And every small and large spontaneously brave action tells us something precious about what humanity is capable of. It is that knowledge that helps us get up to face another day, no matter what it brings.

In The Vitamin Cocktail of Courage, Jane Bolton looks at varieties and elements of courage. She provides practical tips for how we can “supplement our personal reservoirs of courage” through action.

It seems action is a consistent theme! My favourite books on showing up, doing the work and courage are:

Steven Pressfield: The War of Art, Turning Pro and Do the Work

Brené Brown: Daring Greatly, Rising Strong

Elizabeth Gilbert: Big Magic

Stephen King: On Writing

Some of these feature in my special ‘36 Books‘ list so you can read more there.

And I think Scott Stabile’s ‘Big Love’ might join this list soon!

What are your favourite books and blog posts on the courage to show up and do the work?

Social media interactions

On Instagram, there’s been plenty of people showing up around Kim Manganelli aka @journeyofawriter and her #showup100 hashtag project. The idea is to show up for 100 days before the end of the year and share pics of how you are doing this. If you are looking for an online community focused on showing up creatively – this is the place for you!

On Quiet Writing and Tarot Narratives

On Quiet Writing, I’ve been thrilled to launch my free ebook: 36 Books that Shaped my Story into the world. It’s been so lovely to hear from readers engaging with my story! It’s a journey of creative influence and how books are ways that shape and flag what’s calling us.

My Tarot Narratives on Instagram continue to be a way to practice intuition at this time of change. There have been plenty of messages about going with the flow and trusting our journey. Gabrielle Bernstein in ‘Spirit Junkie’ reminds us of the role of intuition and connection with spirit in our work and life:

Since my primary focus was to stay connected to spirit, everything else flowed. Each outward action I took was backed by strong intuition and inspiration. All I needed to do was commit to the belief that with spirit as my guide, everything was possible.

Share your thoughts:

Would love to hear your favourite books, posts and thoughts on the courage to show up! And all about how you are showing up in your life!

Have a fabulous creative weekend.

Creative and Connected is a regular post (most Fridays) and links to recent previous posts are below. Or you can find them all here. There are so many rich resources to inspire you and I hope you enjoy them. I would love any feedback via social media or comments and let me know what you are enjoying too.

Feature image and desktop pic via pexels.com

Keep in touch

Sign up + get your free ebook 36 Books that Shaped my Story: Reading as Creative Influence

Just pop your email in the box to the right or below and ’36 Books’ will be with you soon! It’s a 94-page reflection on the creative influence of what we read. It takes you on a journey through my own influences. Find out which 36 books influenced me and why!

You will also receive updates and opportunities from Quiet Writing and its passions. This includes coaching, writing, creativity, and other connections to help you show up and express your unique voice in the world.

Quiet Writing is on Facebook – Please visit here and ‘Like’ to keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. There are regular posts on tarot, intuition, influence, passion, creativity, productivity, writing, voice, introversion and personality type assessment.

If you enjoyed this post, please share via your preferred social media channel – links are below.

You might also enjoy:

Creative and Connected #11 – on the special value of self-leadership

Creative and Connected #8 – ways to honour your unique life blend

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coaching personality and story

Creative and connected #11 – on the special value of self-leadership

August 25, 2017

“Become a scientist of your own experience.”

Elizabeth Gilbert quoting her guru on The Good Life Project

Here’s a round-up of what I’ve enjoyed this week on self-leadership and how we work towards being wholehearted through taking personal action.

My guest post on How To Become The Heart Of Successful Leadership featured recently on WorkSearch.com. It celebrates the art of self-leadership and knowing yourself as a leader. It was based on the recently published book, Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude by Raymond M Kethledge and Michael S Erwin. My personal experience as a leader, introvert, life-long learner and committed autodidact also influenced my thoughts and reflections.

Two key threads underlie Quiet Writing: one is being wholehearted and how we create our stories; the other is self-leadership and how we work towards being wholehearted through taking personal action. The key to taking action and knowing which actions to take are:

knowing ourselves and what we value and desire
learning to listen to our inner knowing
understanding our innate personality, including its strengths and what is challenging for us
seeking out, incorporating and acting on influence and inspiration from others.

My thoughts on wholehearted self-leadership stem from being a leader in the workplace and learning from this experience. The leadership of creativity and my impact on others’ ability to be innovative has been a key theme in my life’s work. I’m interested in how this lens can now be applied more broadly so that self-leadership is a way of promoting self-driven approaches to more holistic career and creativity.

The key aspects I have chosen to focus on in Quiet Writing are:

Life Coaching – for wholehearted self-leadership
Writing – to discover our wholehearted stories and in this how we strive for creative lives and careers
Personality assessment and exploration – to be able to explore our personality stories through Jung/Myers-Briggs frameworks and other perspectives to help us in our quest for understanding, accepting and knowing ourselves.

These three threads interweave throughout Quiet Writing. Today, let’s focus on the special value of self-leadership: what it means to me and what’s in the literature about this idea so that we can build on it together.

Podcasts on aspects of self-leadership

It was difficult to find podcasts specifically on this subject. This made me reflect on what self-leadership is and how my listening and reading choices and influences now and over the years are part of self-leadership. How I’ve decided to spend my time, who I’ve decided to engage with and listen to and read and who I’ve decided to learn from and study with – are all part of my self-leadership choices, especially as a self-directed learner.

I wrote many years ago about My Seven Stars and it’s amazing how these stars still influence me today. They have reappeared in critical podcasts this week, with themes that reappear over time. This week seemed to be all about these influences coming together in new ways.

Susannah Conway on Building a Heart-centred Business – on The Priestess Podcast with Julie Parker

This podcast felt like two parts of my world coming together – both centred around building a heart-centred business. Susannah Conway is one of my seven stars from my 2010 post, so I have been connected with her for a long time. I have done just about all of Susannah’s fabulous ecourses and each has been a critical part of my life, especially Blogging from the Heart. She has inspired my notions of building a heart-centred business.

When I made a plan to pursue Life Coaching as a new wholehearted career, I was naturally looking for a program aligned to my goals of being heart-centred. It was such a thrill to find Julie Parker and the Beautiful You Coaching Academy. I have just finished this life-changing program and am now a Beautiful You Life Coach working with clients. To hear Susannah and Julie talk together on this podcast – their first chat together – about building a heart-centred business was amazing. It’s a fabulous example of self-leadership in action as they follow their hearts in business. And it’s not with a business plan, but with a passion and desire to make a difference and connect authentically with people.

Curiosity and the Passion Fallacy – Elizabeth Gilbert on Jonathan Fields’ The Good Life Project

Jonathan Fields is another person I’ve followed for many years. He is a big fan of the examined life and what makes a good life. Elizabeth Gilbert is another major influence on writing and creativity and especially how we can give ourselves permission and take charge. This conversation was full of gems about self-leadership in life and creativity and especially the role of curiosity and learning. I love the quote that heads this post that Elizabeth cites as advice from her guru: “Become a scientist of your own experience.” I love that thought of having self-compassion as we learn and not beating ourselves up too much as we try new things on our journey. I need to listen to this one again with a notebook in hand.

Feels like the first time – on Personality Hacker with Joel Mark Witt and Antonia Dodge

Knowing our personality type and its strengths and challenges is a key part of Quiet Writing. That’s why I’ve gained certification in personality assessment given the impact that knowing more about my personality type had on me. It was another life-changing step on my self-leadership journey. On the Personality Hacker podcast, Joel and Antonia talk about their recent experience of learning more about their personality and how, even as experts in this space, it felt like the first time. They talk about how we can resist integrating parts of our personality and that it may take time to absorb the information, especially for the more challenging aspects. This podcast highlights how learning about yourself is an ongoing and open-ended adventure which can be so enlightening.

How to be a writer: traditional publishing to indie and hybrid – with John Birmingham on The Creative Penn

Joanna Penn is another of my seven stars and not a week goes by when I don’t learn something from her! So much of being an indie author is about self-leadership and self-learning. This chat with Australian author, John Birmingham, was a fantastic insight into the publishing industry. It shows how, even for experienced full-time writers, indie publishing offers a self-directed alternative that puts control and resources back in the author’s hands. It’s an honest and fascinating account of how John Birmingham took himself through this shift to being hybrid for practical reasons. Great to hear an Aussie voice on the show too!

Books and reading notes

My reading week

In line with my recent post on reading more productively and the accountability here, I’ve been reading a few books concurrently. I’m reading Sharon Blackie’s If Women Rose Rooted: The Journey to Authenticity and Belonging in hard copy and also Spitting Blood: The History of Tuberculosis by Helen Bynum as an ebook. Both very different reads, but fascinating in their own way.

I’ve also been listening to Write. Publish. Repeat. (The No Luck Required Guide to Self-publishing Success) by Sean Platt and Johnny B Truant with David Wright, as an audiobook. The authors make their living as full-time indie authors and tell you how they did it and make money from it. And yes, there’s a lot of self-developed knowledge and self-leadership in there – including a heap of mistakes they’ve learnt from. There’s a lot of swearing and honest fun in this practical book based on years of experience.

I’ve also been really hard at work reading my own ebook ’36 Books that Shaped my Story: Reading as Creative Influence’ as I prepare to send it out into the world to Quiet Writing subscribers! There’s been so many practical stumbling blocks and so much learning as I go through my own first self-publishing journey. My plan is to launch on 3 September so make sure you sign up to Quiet Writing so you can receive it!

Book and blog notes on this week’s theme of self-leadership

First mention goes to the fabulous ‘Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude‘ by Raymond M Kethledge and Michael S Erwin. Reading this book intensively over a weekend as for the guest post, How to Become the Heart of Successful Leadership, was a deep, immersive read on the aspects of self-leadership at the heart of being a successful leader. This was something I had long known and felt myself, as the post explains. This book really helped to understand these aspects of self-leadership in a new and thorough way.

Based on case-studies of leaders and interviews with contemporary leaders, it is full of grounded advice on managing the self as the first step in leading others. It’s about how people need solitude to be clear and in touch with themselves as they lead. And it’s not just about introverts; the case study examples show that extraverts also need to check in with themselves through solitude especially in challenging leadership circumstances. I highly recommend this excellent book. More in my guest post – so hop over to WorkSearch.com and have a read!

To be honest, the idea of self-leadership has been with me for quite a while. It was there before I read ‘Lead Yourself First’ and before I found anything online about it. It emerged from my own thinking and experiences, especially ‘wholehearted self-leadership’ as a central focus of Quiet Writing.

It’s been interesting to see what is already out there about self-leadership. So here’s a snapshot of some information.

Self Leadership International which provides the definition:

Self-leadership is having a developed sense of who you are, what you can do, where you are going coupled with the ability to influence your communication, emotions and behaviors on the way to getting there.

The article What is self-leadership reinforces the central role of self-leadership in leadership and making a difference. The article postulates that self-leadership begins with self-awareness and self-management then shifts to awareness and management of others.

Derek Lauber provides 8 principles in The zen of self-leadership, based on the premise that:

Self-leadership is your ability to masterfully lead yourself so you can create the success you want for yourself, your family, your business and your life.

In Self-leadership and success, Brett Steenbarger’s thoughts are most in line with what I am thinking about. He says:

Think of your life as a diversified organization. You are in the business of living….

When you think about it, you are the CEO of a rather diversified enterprise. Any such business requires capable leadership.

His key message is that:

Self-leadership begins when we stop prioritizing tasks and start prioritizing the elevated state in which we are most productive.

This is very valuable advice! I see our personal productivity as a key piece in being positive self-leaders.

Blog/Twitter/Instagram posts and interactions:

A favourite blog read this week was Nicole Cody’s post on healing stones and their energies, something I am exploring more. I sought out a few key stones this week that were calling me: amethyst, citrine, black tourmaline, amazonite and carnelian.

On Instagram, there’s been plenty of activity around Susannah Conway’s The August Break focused around noticing, community and inspiration. My photo for ‘silver’ this week featured the shimmering waters of the beach beckoning me. I haven’t been there as much as I would like and need to get back after being unwell. One thing I’ve learnt about self-leadership is that self-care and exercise is a huge part of it! I need to honour this.

On Quiet Writing and Tarot Narratives

On Quiet Writing, it was busy behind the scenes as I worked on my 36 Books ebook. I also prepared for our next ‘Wholehearted Stories’ post on Monday in partnership with the author. I can’t wait to share this beautiful story with you from a very special guest blogger.

My Tarot Narratives on Instagram have continued to be a rich source of inspiration and insight for my journey. Thanks for all the creative interactions. It was so lovely to celebrate the arrival of Lisa McLoughlin’s Life Design Cards along with my healing stones this week. It’s a deck focused on tools and practices for self-leadership and ‘weaving a different story’. It was lovely when #28 ‘Enjoy the lush and flourishing’, popped up to say hello with the message:

Through the simplest of pleasures, be more present to the warmth, colourfulness and juiciness of life. What is holding you back from making pleasure a priority?”

Indeed. It’s a good time for getting unstuck in many ways.

Have a fabulous creative weekend!

Creative and Connected is a regular post each Friday and the previous posts are below. I hope you enjoy it. I would love any feedback via social media or comments and let me know what you are enjoying too.

Feature image via pexels.com

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Creative and Connected #9 – on the art and love of reading

Creative and Connected #8 – ways to honour your unique life blend

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