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Sacred Creative Collective Group Coaching

January 15, 2021

Create deeper meaning and purpose in your life with the support of a coach and a community!

Join the next Sacred Creative Collective Group Coaching for 3 months of wholehearted self-leadership coaching.

Get on the waitlist to be the first to know when enrolment is open!

Get on the Waitlist!

Read on to learn more about the Collective

Create a life that has more meaning and purpose. Move beyond procrastination. Commit to a project or transition, work consistently, and see it through with confidence and discipline. Connect with practical tools to create progress instead of going over old problems or ways of doing things. Take that dream of writing a book or blog or creating a new life path or ecourse and begin to make it real.

Sacred Creative Collective is for you if you are creating a new life story and it feels a little overwhelming and lonely at times as you work through it all.

Explore what you desire to create in a safe environment with accountability and companionship. Learn with a guide and other wise women walking on the road with you so you feel supported. Because sometimes it can feel like hard work and we all need that guidance and a place to share our breakthroughs and work through our challenges.

When you get the connecting threads in place, you’ll feel clearer about the path you’re taking.

You’ll have the resources and tools to bring the threads together. You’ll feel motivated and enthusiastic with good habits, discipline and rituals established. Knowing more about your personality strengths (and saboteurs!), these practices will provide a strong foundation for flexing into new territory in ways that work for you!

You’ll feel a sense of direction and purpose, especially if you’re working on shaping a new life chapter. Perhaps life has changed in some fundamental way. You might have finally left (or are planning to leave) that workplace behind and are wanting to get back to what you truly value. You might want to weave together ways of living and working in a more seamless, harmonious and productive way. Perhaps you’ve been on this journey for some time now and need a little boost and support through the ups and downs.

Whatever the circumstances, you are planning a deeper shift to a more creative way of living, one closer to your heart.

Working with the Sacred Creative Collective, you’ll shape plans and strategies for working the best way for you. You’ll feel you have a goal, something to aim for. No longer simply biding your time, you will be doing something of value. Your spiritual life is deeply important to you (whatever that means for you) and probably always has been. Your own practice is sacred to you, but you’d love to share and learn with others too, so you can connect and enrich each other.

Stepping away from the ordinary world for a while, you can listen more clearly to your own inner wisdom.

Introducing the Sacred Creative Collective, a step-by-step 3-month group program for women who want clarity and momentum for a more fulfilling life without the overwhelm.

As a result of working together in the Sacred Creative Collective, you will:

Embrace your calling and creativity and take your desires from intention through planning to reality so you can make them happen!
Be in confident action towards a creative project or life transition you deeply want.
Better understand and work in alignment with your personality preferences so you can achieve your goals in your own way.
Enjoy the support and accountability of a coach and a community of women, sharing wisdom and cheering each other on so you feel connected as you make change.
Develop self-leadership skills for sustainable change so your investment and engagement has lasting and enduring impact.

Meet your guide for the journey

I’m Terri Connellan, your coach for the Sacred Creative Collective and I’m here to guide you on the journey. Here’s what’s unique about the Sacred Creative Collective and what I bring to you.

I blend magic and practicality, vision and action, intention and doing the work, intuition and logic, group and individual focus, your calling and a community to support YOU.

I’m a master curator of rich resources, learning and just the right tools to open you to the wisdom and creativity within.

I bring together a passion for creative living with skill and knowledge as a life coach and personality type practitioner, backed by 30 years’ experience in adult education teaching, facilitation and leadership.

I am skilled at zeroing in on individual needs and facilitating learning in a group environment. Using these skills to shape a flexible learning experience, I will guide you at both an individual and a group level to meet your needs.

Most importantly, I’ve been on a major life transition journey myself over the past 4 years.

Pretty much everything has fundamentally changed as I’ve shifted from being a long-term government employee to shaping a self-sustaining, creative life based on my passions and desires. My book Wholehearted: Self-leadership for Women in Transition was published on 6 September 2021. It’s what I’ve wanted for a long time. It’s been a soul-nourishing journey, working on my deeper purpose and meaning. I’ve taken my body of work, skills and experience and added to it to create a new life for myself. I’ve finally got down to doing the creative work of my heart that I’ve longed to do. I share my story, skills and learned wisdom to help you create your deeper story.

Secure your place on the VIP Waitlist and early access to resources to be in action.

Secure your VIP place on the Waitlist!

Here’s what people have said:

I enjoyed my time with the Sacred Creative Collective learning from and drawing on Terri’s teachings, experience and invaluable feedback. It provided me with the structure, accountability, support and community that I felt I needed to be in action as I started out on my new journey away from the corporate world. Terri’s leadership and deep knowledge, the thoroughness and professionalism of the content presented and shared throughout was a highlight, as well as the opportunity to meet others on a new journey, deepening their own path. Terri and the Sacred Creative Collective entered my life at exactly the moment I needed this support and I am grateful for this!

VALERIE LEWIS – VISUALISE AND BLOOM – and read Valerie’s fuller Sacred Creative Story HERE

The last three months’ coaching as part of the Sacred Collective Coaching group has been truly life-changing. I feel like I have pushed reset, examining so many areas of my life and personality. I now feel much more able to step into my own power and move forward confidently and with ease. Thank you Terri for gentle and encouraging feedback and informative and enlightening guidance. It definitely feels like this is learning we can revisit time and time again, each time going deeper and getting further to our core.

ELIZABETH MILLIGAN – ON INSTAGRAM – and read Elizabeth’s fuller Sacred Creative Story HERE.

The length of the course is ideal for getting started and making good progress on a project. I love how everyone can be working on their own goals and still be able to learn new things and participate together. I’ve made progress in the area of personal power: learning about archetypes, shadow work and saboteurs has been deep and meaningful. I am feeling more positive about my ability to lead myself and also as I learn more and more about the INFJ personality, I am finding it to be so helpful in understanding why I do what I do. Thank you, Terri! It has been a transformative experience.

CORA PACHECO – EAGLE AND STAR TAROT – Read Cora’s fuller Sacred Creative Story HERE.

Here’s what’s included in the 3-month Sacred Creative Collective:

Weekly Sacred Creative Skills live presentations

12 weekly Sacred Creative Skills live presentations help you learn practical creativity, personality and self-leadership skills to apply to a personal project or goal. With resources to support your individual creative project or life transition plans, you’ll be skilling up AND be in action towards your goals.

Sacred Creative Skills shared include:

PERSONALITY: KNOWING YOURSELF: your style, personality and preferences as guides: your personality type, style statement, style and type, archetype and other lenses of self-knowledge and personal insights.
SELF-LEADERSHIP: CREATIVITY + TRANSITION YOUR WAY: self-leadership, living and working in seasons, personal practices and rhythms, writing, solitude.
CREATIVITY: CREATIVE PRACTICE TOOLS + RESOURCES: writing, intuitive practice, technology/social media tips, organisational tools, managing social media and focus in a digital age.
SHOWING UP TO YOUR CALLING in your own unique way: resistance, turning professional, responding to your calling, knowing your saboteurs and particular brand of self-sabotaging.
YOUR INFLUENCES + ENVY AS GUIDES to what you want: your creative influences over time and what they can tell you; looking at envy as a source of insight as to what you want.
FEELING WHOLE IN YOUR WORK, CALLING + TRANSITIONS: Personality type and transition and working on your personality strengths and less preferred areas to feel whole in your work and manage transitions positively.

Monthly Group Coaching Calls

Via 7 fortnightly online group coaching sessions, we will explore individual goals and progress in a collective environment. A combination of coaching and community, you’ll be accountable for your actions in a supported way and enjoy companionship on the journey. With a small group capped to a maximum of 12 women, we will be able to ask questions and connect in a deep way over the 3 months.

Bonus Creative Mentor session with Nicola Newman

You’ll have a bonus 60-minute group mentor session with Nicola Newman, an inspiring Creative Mentor leading a self-directed creative life. We’ll talk about the art of creative living in a live conversation and Q&A with Nicola, drawing on her experiences of creative and positive life transition. You’ll learn how to focus in on your desires and options and be inspired by Nicola who has shaped change with creativity and success.

Personalised 1:1 coaching support

With 1:1 personalised email and video feedback from me as your coach through-out, you’ll feel accountable and driven towards your goals. You can also access additional 1:1 coaching sessions at a special Sacred Creative Collective rate to intensify and support your learning if you desire.

A private Facebook Group community

A Facebook community will provide a place for sharing learning, experiences and practice. We’ll co-create and support each other and have fun in the process.

Online, global and ongoing access

All learning in this program is online so you can work from the comfort of your home anywhere in the world. Dates and times for group coaching by Zoom video-conferencing will be organised to best suit the timezones of those who sign-up. All sessions will be recorded for easy access. You’ll have ongoing access to the Sacred Creative Skills course content, Facebook and group coaching recordings beyond the 6 months so you can always go back to the resources to refresh your learning.

Opportunity to join the Sacred Creative Collective Mastermind Alumni group

You also have the opportunity to join the Sacred Creative Collective Mastermind Group for alumni only. This is an ongoing way to keep supported and connected with wholehearted self-leadership, a coach and a like-minded community of women.

You’ll finally be able to bring together a plan to achieve your dreams and make it happen. 💃🏼 💃🏼 💃🏼

And I’ll support you through all of the threads of the program to be sustainably self-directed and in action for the long-term.

Here’s a check-in about whether it’s the right program for you:

I want to know that you will enjoy fantastic outcomes and have a life-changing experience. You want to get excellent value for your investment and transformational tools and positive steps into a sustainable new life chapter. And enjoy your time in the process!

So here’s what I know:

The Sacred Creative Collective is perfect for you if:

you’re ready (super keen) to shape a life transition or creative project.
you love creativity, reading, learning and shaping personal practices.
you are excited about getting to know women on a similar journey.
you want to understand yourself and personality preferences better.
you’re committed to putting time into working on yourself.
you’re excited by a blend of individual and group work.
you think a mix of coaching and teaching/learning from me would work well for you now.

The Sacred Creative Collective is not for you if:

you’re not ready to make life changes or commit to a creative project.
you don’t like learning, reading or shaping new material into your life.
you’d prefer to work one to one and not engage with a community.
you don’t feel you have anything to learn about your personality.
you’re not committed to investing time into working on yourself.
you don’t feel comfortable with a blend of individual and group work.

I hope that makes it clear. I want the best for you! You can hop over to Work with Me for other options like 1:1 coaching if you feel the Sacred Creative Collective is not for you now. Or book a Self-leadership Discovery Call to check.

And to make it easier, you only need to pay the first instalment in advance to secure your place.

The rest is to be paid in additional equal instalments in advance each month during the program.

Doors open early for those on the waitlist to receive an EARLY BIRD discount and early access to resources to be in action.

As soon as you pay your first instalment and have an introductory Self-leadership Discovery Call to check it will be a great fit for you. You get early access to resources so you can be in action before the program formally starts. You will hit the ground running and make the most of the 6 months.

The early bird resources include:

A WELCOME PACKAGE with the Sacred Creative Skills program outlined in full so you can see the whole and where you would personally like to zero in.
A PERSONAL LEARNING PLAN WORKBOOK so you can start to shape your goals and learning program. You can start early and plan for success, honing in on your personal focus. It might be a creative project, the next step in your life path or creative business like a transition plan, blogging or writing practice or developing content for an ecourse or face to face program. Whatever feels right for you.
A detailed RESOURCE LIST so you can begin to choose the BOOKS you would like to focus in on or the PODCAST episodes you would like to listen to motivate you in making real progress in the Sacred Creative Collective.

Set your intentions for a new creatively inspired life in line with your meaning and purpose. It’s a great opportunity to set yourself up for a positive and focused time and also have support in negotiating all the global challenges we are experiencing.

So are you interested in working together in a sacred creative way with a coach and others?

Fabulous – it is going to be wholehearted, creative work and play as we wind our way together towards deeper meaning and purpose.

Here’s how to get started!

Be in action toward your goals now. Places are limited to a maximum so take advantage of early access to resources and secure your place. Here’s what to do!

Get on the VIP Waitlist now!

If we are already in contact now via coaching or mastermind groups, send me an email and we can work out if a discovery call step is needed.

Questions?

Have any questions? Check out the FAQs below at the end of this post.

The Sacred Creative Collective is a value-packed way to work with me to access all my skills, knowledge and experience, gain valuable self-leadership skills and make new connections.

With the resources you receive in advance, you can be in action to make powerful progress over the 6 months. A 1:1 45-minute Discovery Call will help you kick off your plans with focus and insight.

Here’s more about what people have said:

Creativity flourishes within intentionally crafted containers and the Sacred Creative Collective is among the most friendly and loving spaces I know. Attracted to Terri’s subject-matter expertise and curation style, I enrolled to allow myself to receive the kind of support I’m accustomed to giving in my professional field. As such, this program envisioned as an ‘external’ accountability structure delightfully points back to inner wisdom, where authentic accountability arises from within and is exponentially enhanced by group participation yet not dependent on it. The vast, detailed library of resources, combined with a wealth of skills instruction and a generous measure of laser coaching, has exercised and strengthened these creative wings for takeoff!
– PE

I really enjoyed being part of the Sacred Creative Collective and the experience of being on a learning journey with other women on a similar quest of acquiring knowledge and strategies to facilitate our writing dreams. There was a feeling of acceptance and support throughout the course, whilst having a definite structure to adhere to. Having Terri share her journey and acquired learning along the way was both interesting and useful. Terri put us on to some terrific resources and shared some very inspiring and motivational quotes which kept propelling us forward. The inbuilt accountability of spelling out our weekly priorities and fortnightly goals and action helped me to achieve my goal of creating my blog and launching it into the world!
– DR

Frequently Asked Questions

How much time will I need to commit to the program?

The program material itself (Sacred Creative Skills, Group Coaching, Facebook, Mentor Calls, 1:1 work over the 3 months) requires a commitment of about 2-3 hours per week on average. Then your work on your individual goals and projects is additional to this – however, this is work you would want to be doing anyway. The group coaching will help you be in action in a more strategic, efficient, productive and supported way towards your plans.

What if I get behind?

The material is always there to go back to and you can work in whatever way suits you. Focusing week to week helps to be in action and working on the early materials as soon as you have access will give you a head start for deep action.

How big is the group?

The group is small enough for individual attention and intimate connection but large enough for a sense of community. The program is capped to ensure the best balance over the three months.

What about time zones and the timing of the calls?

The Sacred Creative Collective attracts women from all over the world which provides a rich opportunity for interaction and connection. Dates and times for group coaching by Zoom video-conferencing will be organised to best suit the timezones of those who sign-up. Group coaching will be a 90-minute session with the whole group if that works or in 2 x 60-minute options each fortnight at times when global time-zones make a single group too challenging.

Why do I need to book a Self-leadership Discovery Call?

This is a coaching program and even though we are working as a group, you’ll be working on your own priorities and projects. To be able to customise the program to both individual and group needs, I need to get to know you and your priorities and desires. Plus we need to know it’s the right fit for you before you commit.

When you book your session, I’ll be sending you some questions to prepare in advance. If you decide to go ahead with the program, you’ll be ready for when doors open or to enrol ASAP. If we decide it’s not the right fit, I’m happy to share other resources and options to help you get what you need and of course, refund your initial payment or transfer it to another option of your choice.

If we are already in touch and know each other well via coaching or other means, just send an email to me at terri@quietwriting.com and we can talk that way.

What if I feel I need more 1:1 support?

If you feel you need more 1:1 support, you can access 1:1 coaching with me during the 3 months of the program. This will be available at the special rate of $140AU per hour which is 15% off.

Do I need any special technology?

No. It’s all pretty standard technology for online courses and coaching. You just need a computer, internet connection, email address and a pair of earbuds or headphones with inbuilt microphone for group calls. I’ll be there to guide you and help if there are any issues or it is new to you.

What if I am not confident with technology?

I’ll be there to help you every step of the way and can work with you 1:1 on any challenges that arise. Learning to work with technology will help you to embrace self-leadership and learning goals as well. You’ll learn tools and tips to help you with your goals. In fact, getting confident with technology would make a fantastic learning and life goal for the program!

How long will I have access to the material?

The Sacred Creative Collective resource material will be on the Quiet Writing School ecourse platform and in a private Facebook group. You have access to the material beyond the program to support you to be in action. You can download material for your own use too to ensure you always have your own copy to hand.

How will you blend together group skills and individual projects?

As a teacher in adult vocational education, this is work that I have done for many years and am very skilled in! As a person with INTJ type preferences, it is natural for me to be organised and I love to shape complex material into frameworks and more accessible ways of working. We will have processes and templates for ensuring you can scope personal intentions, goals and plans and have the resources and support to be in action towards them. Group support via Group Coaching and Facebook is an important part of the program. I love teaching and facilitating groups with a mix of individual needs and learning styles as we all learn from each other!

Do I need to know my Jung Myers-Briggs (eg MBTI) personality type before I start?

No, although it does help you to have this knowledge to get the most from the program! You might already know your type from previous work. Working through my deep-dive Personality Stories Coaching Package prior to the program helps you to get into a good place with understanding your unique personality.

Whether you have this knowledge or not, you know yourself well and we can tap into this and work with it. I’ll provide some simple frameworks and activities for working with what you know about your personality preferences. I’ll share insights on psychological type and how it affects the way we naturally work on the way through. As always we will start with where you are and build on that.

Will I get my Jung/Myers-Briggs personality profile through this program?

Not in a formal way but you will know more about your personality from working through this program. Self-assessment with the guidance of a coach is also a valid way to learn about your type. I weave knowledge of psychological type into everything I do. The Personality Stories Coaching Package is a 1:1 deep dive into your personality type if you wish to do this at any time, before, during or after the program. If you already know your type but would like to revisit it prior to the program via a 90 minute 1:1 deep dive coaching session, contact me by email or book a Discovery Call as a first step for both group coaching and personality work.

What happens after the program?

You have the opportunity to join the Sacred Creative Collective alumni Mastermind group for ongoing connection and support. You can also work via 1:1 coaching with me.

Be in action now!

So get on the waitlist for next time and receive early bird access and discounts.

Get on the Waitlist!

I look forward to sacred creatively co-creating with you!

PS Here’s an insight into the quality of my online teaching and learning approaches:

The variety of ways Terri presents the study material means that everyone coming to the course will find their preferred method of learning catered for. I’m an aficionado of online courses, but I’ve never encountered such a sensitivity to the needs of different learners and is a testament to Terri’s wealth of experience in the field of education. Gold standard stuff here.

Coaching as a skill + how to skill up in the best way!

August 30, 2019

In this post, I share my learning about coaching as a skill and how to get skilled up in life coaching via the Beautiful You Coaching Academy!

Coaching as a skill

Coaching is a skill like teaching, writing, painting, counselling, copywriting or managing social media skilfully.

As I trained to become a life coach and developed my skills, I realised it is a skill-set I can hone and combine with other unique skills gained through life experience and formal and informal learning.

You might be seeing quite a lot of life coaches and coaches generally out there and thinking that it is a crowded market. Furthermore, you might think there’s no room for you.

It is true that the field is attracting growth and people wanting a new life direction. It’s attractive because it works as a skill to guide and support others in their personal development. Being a life coach is very satisfying and fulfilling work.

Coaching is also a flexible skill-set you can combine with others to create a new life. There is abundant space for you to bring your unique skills and experience together with coaching to see where it takes you. And to fulfil long-held dreams you may have.

Coaching is a skill you can endlessly combine with teaching, parenting, creativity, personality, self-leadership, design, wellbeing, spirituality, mindfulness, business and marketing, just to name a few skill-sets. If you think of coaching in this way, it helps you open up the possibilities for you and your situation. It’s potentially the gateway to a whole new way of life.

My skill-set I blend with coaching as a skill

I began my coaching journey with a background as a teacher and leader in the adult vocational education sector in Australia. Teaching and mentoring are key skills in my skill-set gained over time through formal study and practice in the workplace. I supported the skills training of thousands of students as well as going on to become a leader of teachers and support staff. As a leader, I worked on mentoring and coaching others and leading innovation in online learning.

My passion is writing and creativity. I have worked on writing as a skill nearly all my life including as a teacher of writing. I am a published poet and writer and I’ve blogged for nearly ten years. A learning and language expert, I have studied to Masters level and have two diplomas of education. Such is my love of learning!

Weaving skills together

Alongside becoming a coach, I also trained as a Jung/Myers-Briggs personality type practitioner and coach. Becoming a personality type coach fulfilled a long-held dream. I am now active in national and international type communities including speaking in Australia and the UK at the British Association of Psychological Type on type and transition.

In my coaching, I weave these passions and skills – creativity, personality and self-leadership – together with coaching skills. All my learning in these three areas is at the heart of my offerings and work. I blend them together into a unique blend focused on wholehearted self-leadership. Plus I’ve written a book, Wholehearted: Self-leadership for Women in Transition which is accompanied by a Wholehearted Companion Workbook for practical application.

And I keep working on my coaching skills and being coached – it’s that important as a skill in my life and can be in yours.

Many unique blends of skills

I share my story to show how life coaching as a skill can weave together with other skills. There are as many unique blends of skills as there are people in the world.

I am amazed as I connect with fellow coaches in the Beautiful You Coaching Academy community that no two of us are the same. We are all pursuing our passions, vocation and desired feelings and supporting our clients in different ways depending on our background. There might be similarities in some passions and skills, but the blend we each bring and how we put it together makes each of us and our offerings unique.

There are so many ways you can combine coaching as a skill with your existing, emerging and desired skill-sets.

What skills you could blend together with coaching to create your unique offerings in the world?

Adding coaching to your skill-set

In the Beautiful You course, you are taught about coaching as a skill and the practical ways of working as a life coach. The course explores:

1:1 coaching
group coaching
branding + your niche
events
podcasts
blogging
social media
running a coaching business
speaking

You learn about coaching skills of: goal-setting, questioning, listening, facilitating rich coaching conversations and skillfully managing a coaching series every step of the way.

Coaching as a skill combines with various delivery methods, income sources and ways of getting your unique message out into the world. Combining life coaching as a skill with other disciplines, skills and business approaches yields so many opportunities. Your personality and passions help you work out where to focus and how to blend your skills best in line with your gifts and strengths.

The training is just the start. There is ongoing support and encouragement via Beautiful You after your course as you further develop. You connect with a fabulously diverse and global community to continue to learn with and from. Making new and deep friendships is an ongoing legacy of the course.

In addition to being a skill, life coaching is a pathway to deeper purpose and meaning, for both you and the people you coach, and that is priceless.

As Beautiful You CEO Julie Parker says in an Inspired Coach issue:

It’s all about connecting with those whose message authentically aligns with your own.

And there are so many unique ways to do that!

Be in action!

So consider how life coaching might play a role in your life! How might you add it to your unique skill-set, body of work, knowledge and experience to shape a new life?

Add the heart-centred, flexible, creative and vitally important skill of coaching to your skill-set. See what magic you can create in the world.

As Steven Pressfield invokes us in The War of Art:

Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.

Head over to the Beautiful You Coaching Course page for more information.

I look forward to the possibility of working with you! Any questions? Just send me a message using the below form! Or to book a free, no-obligation Discovery Call, go direct to this link.

Keep in touch

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Non-Ordinary Transcendent Experiences – a review of ‘The Power of NOTEs’ by Nicole Gruel, PhD

January 18, 2019

Want to learn more about Non-Ordinary Transcendent Experiences? ‘The Power of NOTEs’ will help you understand and work with them as a source for transformation. Read on!

NOTEs are an important aspect of the human experience that help point towards and awaken the desire, curiosity, and courage to explore more of what life could be.

from The Power of NOTEs by Nicole Gruel PhD

Nicole Gruel PhD

Have you ever experienced something that felt out of the ordinary, super-charged or transcendent, that changed your life in some key way?

Many of us have, yet it’s an area of human experience we tend not to talk about. Often this is because we don’t quite understand what happened. We keep quiet, often for years, as we try to make sense of it and what it meant. It’s frequently a solitary, and sometimes, painful journey. But more people are beginning to talk about these non-ordinary transcendent experiences however they manifest. They are emerging as sources of positive transformation and personal power if we pay attention, talk about them and work through them.

Dr Nicole Gruel’s new book, ‘The Power of NOTEs: How Non-Ordinary Transcendent Experiences Transform the Way We Live, Love and Lead‘ is an important, research-based contribution to the field of spiritual psychology and transformation.

After a near-death experience and the sudden loss of family members, Nicole found herself deep in the realm of non-ordinary transcendent experiences. In particular, she learnt their power for positive change.

Nicole has gone on to explore NOTEs deeply including via PhD studies. Her Doctoral Dissertation focused on “AfterNOTEs: Non-Ordinary Transcendent Experiences and their Aftereffects Through Jung’s Topology”. This involved interviewing people who had experienced NOTES and working through the psychological dimensions of their response. This deep qualitative and quantitative research, combined with personal experience and NOTEs community connection, provides the rich source material that this excellent, practical book is woven around.

So what are NOTEs?

A non-ordinary transcendent experience is a rare and unfamiliar event that takes you beyond your regular understanding of yourself and the world.

from The Power of NOTES

An acronym created by transpersonal psychologist William Braud, ‘NOTE’ captures experiences at the intersection of “paranormal research, exceptional human experiences, and transpersonal psychology.” (p3). Well-known examples include near-death experiences and paranormal encounters, but the scope of NOTEs is much wider and more inclusive than this.

In the opening chapter, Nicole explains that she groups over 500 potential NOTEs into nine categories, such as Death-related experiences, Encounter experiences, and Mystical experiences. Nicole describes each category of NOTEs, helping the reader to connect with their own personal database of experiences.

What is the power of NOTEs?

The power of NOTEs is realising their potential for our growth and insight. Nicole explains the ability of NOTEs to take us out of ourselves and our habitual ways of being:

For many experiencers, tasting our core self is the greatest gift of a NOTE. (p7)

It is a type of disruption forcing our attention in new ways and often taking some time to integrate. This is often because societal and cultural contexts make it hard for us to talk about them. Nicole explores this with examples from the lives of experiencers. She shows too that NOTEs offer wisdom and insight that has implications beyond the individual.

Greater wisdom calls for us to access the insights of NOTEs as best we can, for these experiences provide a necessary lens into other ways of seeing and being in the world. (p9)

Research shows that when people share NOTEs, it has many benefits for individual wellbeing, such as reducing stress. Nicole has made it her mission to help people share and understand NOTEs as part of the human and collective experience.

The landscape of NOTEs

I had the pleasure of attending the online launch of Nicole’s book recently, where we had a virtual tour through the book. We also heard from leaders and writers in the NOTEs community. These experiences, alongside reading the book, have helped me better understand the landscape of NOTEs.

The book explores NOTEs from all perspectives including the dark and light sides of being an experiencer and from the viewpoint of neuroscience. Nicole scopes neuroscience perspectives and evidence that shows we are hard-wired to experience NOTEs.

A fellow personality type practitioner, Nicole also looks through the personality lens at the gifts of NOTEs:

NOTEs are powerful because they put us on the fast track toward a fuller expression of who we most naturally and uniquely are.

Research shows that the specific content of a near-death experience, its impact and significance is influenced by people’s personal psychology.

Connecting NOTEs experiences with Jung’s eight psychological types, Nicole explores eight gifts or transcendent dimensions of personality using James Graham Johnston’s model of the Gift’s Compass™. For example, Introverted Thinking (Ti) connects with The Conceptual Gift.

Using this lens of personality, Nicole explains that:

Experiencer stories show that the more the natural or true self is made available through NOTEs, the more a person’s dominant personality preferences take on transcendent aspects. (p40)

This ground-breaking perspective, informed by conversations with NOTEs experiencers, helps provide psychological insights into these transcendent events.

Working and transforming with NOTEs

The second half of the book explores NOTEs as clues to our natural flow states; ways to work with NOTEs during and beyond experiences; and how NOTEs can be a transformative power in how we live, love and lead.

Each chapter provides practical tips and practices for working with NOTEs as a transformative power source. Nicole shows how we can create a NOTEs biography and Well-being Wheel, with these tools based on recent, pioneering research and experiences of people actively working on integrating NOTEs into life stories. The self-leadership framework highlights the importance of validating and appropriately sharing NOTEs.

Ultimately, no one is a better coach and guide for you than you. (p62)

The power of love and legacy are keys to the self-leadership experience of working with NOTEs in a personally transformative way.

The experience of reading The Power of NOTEs

I encourage you to read The Power of NOTEs. It is beautifully and clearly written, full of lived and researched wisdom. As Katie Mottram puts it so well in her foreword:

This is not just a book; Nicole has gifted you an experience.

I couldn’t agree more. As if to highlight this, I had a transcendent experience during my reading of the book.

I realised my experiences of NOTEs are mostly in the Encounter experiences category: a kind of synchronicity related to “something wondrous or awesome, like a spectacular view or moving music...” Many years ago, I had a series of astounding synchronistic events with rainbows at a peak time of change and transformation. They had a profound effect on me as rainbow after rainbow connected in an ongoing narrative.

I started Nicole’s book in the early morning hours of a sleepless night two days away from Christmas, the first anniversary of my mother’s death. A few hours later, still restless, I got up early and headed out to the deck. There the most stunning rainbow greeted me in the sky. Rainbows are something I connect with my mother and also my father. I chose songs and poems with the symbolism of rainbows for both their funerals as a way of continuing to connect with them.

My experience of reading the book, reflecting on my own NOTEs symbolism, seemed to open up this connection. It would have been so easy to miss this rainbow.

Connecting with the power of NOTEs

Reading this book will help you connect with the power of NOTEs in your life. As the ‘Praise’ upfront in the book, the Foreword and the online book launch all show, there is a groundswell of research, interest and support in the area of non-ordinary transcendent experiences.

Organisations such as the International Spiritual Emergence Network (ISEN), American Center for the Integration of Spiritually Transformative Experiences (ACISTE), the International Association for Near Death Studies (IANDS) and the Near Death Experience Research Foundation (NDERF) provide a touchpoint for experiences and research around them. You can find further links and information here.

More authors are stepping up to write their stories and gather, honour and structure the experiences of others as Nicole has done. You might like to read my book review of Mystical Interludes II – a Collection of Ordinary People’s Mystical Experiences, collected and edited by Emily Rodavich. The Power of NOTES and Mystical Interludes II came to me in a synchronistic way, at the same time from unique connections but covering similar terrain.

Read Nicole Gruel’s book to recognise, honour and structure such experiences in your life and also in the lives of those you love. If you have had a NOTE, this book can help others share in and understand your experience. Likewise, if you think someone you know may have experienced a NOTE, this book is a useful way to open the conversation or quietly support them. For counsellors, coaches and other professional people, this is an important resource to open up thoughts about spiritually transformative experiences in practice.

And as I finish writing, I hear the sounds of the children next door playing under the water sprinkler in the Sydney midsummer heat. One excitedly shouts: “There’s a rainbow!”

Thought pieces + footnotes

Dr Nicole Gruel is an author, speaker and transformational coach. Descendant from a long line of samurai, she has spent over two decades exploring human potential. You can connect with her at DrNicoleGruel.com.

The Power of NOTES was provided as a review copy by the author in return for a fair review. I am grateful to Dr Nicole Gruel for sharing this book with me.

To purchase, you can use the below link.

For Amazon.com.au:

The Power of NOTEs: Non-Ordinary Transcendent Experiences Transforming the Way We Live, Love, and Lead

Image 1 (feature image), 2 & 5 provided by Nicole Gruel and used with permission and thanks.

You might also enjoy:

Intuition: how to understand and master it – a review of ‘The Inner Tree’ by Maura McCarley Torkildson

“You are the authority on you”: a review of Danielle LaPorte’s White Hot Truth

Being ‘Fierce on the Page’ – a book review

Being a vessel – or working with introverted intuition

36 Books that Shaped my Story – Reading as Creative Influence

When the inner voice calls, and calls again – my journey to wholehearted livings

How to read for more creativity, productivity and pleasure

Keep in touch

Quiet Writing is on Facebook and Instagram – keep in touch and interact with the growing Quiet Writing community. Look forward to connecting with you and inspiring your wholehearted story!

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coaching transition

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.

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.

Gathering my lessons – a wholehearted story

March 29, 2018

This guest post from Shalagh Hogan shows how gathering lessons of self-knowledge over time can lead to wholehearted Creative Soul Living.

This is the eighth guest post in our Wholehearted Stories series on Quiet Writing. I invited readers to consider submitting a guest post on their wholehearted story. You can read more here – and I’m still keen for more contributors!

Quiet Writing celebrates self-leadership in wholehearted living and writing, career and creativity. This community of voices, with each of us telling our own story of what wholehearted living means, is a valuable and central part of this space. In this way, we can all feel connected on our various journeys and not feel so alone. Whilst there will always be unique differences, there are commonalities that we can all learn from and share to support each other.

I am honoured to have Shalagh Hogan as a ‘Wholehearted Stories’ contributor. My sincere thanks to Shalagh for sharing her story and photographs. Shalagh and I connected on Instagram via our love of creativity. Her story shows how growth and self-knowledge accumulate over time. Embracing creativity wholeheartedly via parenting, blogging, community, writing and social media, Shalagh’s gathering lessons evolve into Creative Soul Living. Read on to find out more!

Gathering lessons of self-knowledge

Despite my low self-esteem and anxieties, I have enthusiastically gathered my self-knowledge with hope for a better life. I accept as a given, my need to seek and grow a more whole version of my formerly fragmented self. Yet up to even a few years ago, the concept of Wholehearted Living, or what I call Creative Soul Living, was still just a conceptual inkling. Having never felt whole, the definition and the feeling of wholeness eluded me.

One lesson at a time is how my self-guided journey has unfolded. I am busy gathering my lessons which rise like cream to the top. From the more important lessons about creativity, community, connection, self-care, and self-trust, I have learned who I truly am, what makes me happiest, and who I want to proudly see myself being. Growth takes its time, yet I always feel like my biggest and best lessons are the ones that have just happened.

Valuing intuition and introversion

As a child, I was fragmented. I held too many pains involving too many people. My self-mirrors were broken, and the chaos was draining. I was a creative with no permission to be me. As a teen, much-needed hope collided with my insatiable appetite for knowledge when my mother’s pursuit of a master’s degree in Applied Behavioral Sciences showed me that knowledge was power, and we can use this power to choose our life’s outcome.

It was then, I also began my life-long journal writing practice, developing my inner voice (which I now know to be my intuition) and the voice of my blog. It was then too that my Myers-Briggs test results pegged me as an ENFP. Although this felt mostly right, last year I was relieved to discover and own that I am equal parts Introvert and Extrovert. Although, for many years I neglected my creative callings, the introverted time I now take to think, write, and create are my self-care practices.

Gathering lessons on self-care and self-esteem

My self-care became essential when I was 38 and pregnant with my son. My anxieties and the last of my self-destructive behaviours shook and woke me. It became clear, how I treated myself would be how my kids would treat themselves. Doing as I did and not as I said, my children would inherit my anxieties, my self-doubt, and my repressed creativity. I truly committed then to taking better care of and healing myself mentally and physically that my children might hopefully do the same. Eventually, I quit smoking, I began eating better, and I continued to seek therapy.

My biggest authentic self “aha”, on which the rest of my work truly depended, was given to me in a therapy session. The therapist offered that I had low self-esteem. At first, I raged against this mis-definition of me. If I wasn’t who I thought I was, who was I then? Yet, this information freed me like a bird from my heart cage. I wasn’t broken and didn’t need fixing, nor did I need to help fix anyone I knew. Instead, I needed to have compassion and love for my humanity. And again, I began gathering my lessons.

Writing and connecting to heal

Bad things can happen for good reason, it may just take a while to see why. When my son was one, an American economic slump forced me to close my lovely little gift and antiques store named Bally Eden and I returned home to mourn the loss of my dream shop. I was anxious and desperate not to be stuck at home with my fast-growing-soon-to-be-a-toddler boy without something “just for me”. Encouraged by an old whisper in my ear, I began to write personal essays and publish them online. It then took five more years to start my blog at Shalavee.com which has just turned six.

I purposed the blog to make me a better writer, create a living resume, and voice my lessons regularly. While I achieved these goals, it was the community and relationships I’ve developed here online during my writing journey which have been my truest gift. My new unseen friends and our connections and courtships via comments and kind letters elevated my ego and gave me an immensely better self-image; a self-reflection where there once was none. I began to see my beauty and not my broken. And, as my voice of pain and healing came through on my blog, my readers said, “Keep writing what you are writing. We feel this way too.” Authenticity and vulnerability were my win/win.

Healing through community creativity

These voices from my community have helped to shift my purpose to offering others my voice to speak through. Our self-reflections echo each other through our communications and we begin to see ourselves as both individuals and as a collective of women with one voice of self-love and acceptance. We are gathering our lessons together. Strangers have become mirrors I will treasure forever, and the internet helped make me visible and whole again.

Although I was terrified, in May of 2016, my community encouraged me to host my first Instagram Challenge called the Soul Selfie challenge. For one week, we explored our souls, our fears, and our truths together in a deeper way via the hashtag #Soul_Selfie. My esteem and courage to lead increased incredibly as I hosted another that Fall and two more in 2017.

Then a small gathering on the evening of the first women’s march in January of 2017, inspired me to start a mindful meet-up group of my own in real life. We meet monthly to discuss a soul topic, eat well, and drink prosecco. We witness, acknowledge, and validate one another and that is so very necessary to my process of seeing my wholehearted self. I have created what I needed which benefits me and others and heals us all.

Vanquishing my anxieties with knowledge

Two years ago, even with all the progress in my writing and my self-healing, I knew my anxieties were still running the show. I found a new kick-butt therapist, a new resolve, and heading into my 50’s saw me amp up my efforts of self-discovery and visibility. Reading was one huge resource I used to finally reach the summit of the value hill I’d struggled to climb my entire life. I discovered I could say and mean, “I can”.

I read four books last year with willful intention to change my life’s outlook and my understanding of myself. First, Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert gifted me with such validity and permission for my creative process. I came to understand that I was an Uber-Creative and my inner child needed to be creatively indulged until she trusted me again. From this, I was inspired to create online projects and a creative community to support myself and others in being our creative selves.

I had barely put Big Magic down when I read Daring Greatly by Brené Brown. From her brilliant work, I came to understand the necessity of community, vulnerability, and authenticity. Disconnection is our worst fear and we need to be authentic to belong to, trust, and reconnect with ourselves. And I now understand there’s a connection between creativity and vulnerability.

Then, on my therapist’s recommendation, I read Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David R Burns which was the very first book that permitted me to understand and name my anxieties. I learned how to refute the lies called Cognitive Distortions that cause them. Eventually, this book helped me win the battle against my anxieties.

And lastly, on Terri’s suggestion, I read Cal Newport’s Deep Work. This book showed me that I may be even more capable of making a difference in the world if I allow myself the time and visibility to work on and publish my theories. My deeper thinking and writing will help me and the world, and this feels like a noble purpose.

Creativity conquers all

While reading and gathering my lessons, I became aware of an internal dissonance which my therapist suggested was my inner child throwing tantrums. It seems denying my creativity had my creative inner child furious at me for not allowing her to play. So I decided to just give her what she wanted.

First, I indulged in thirty days of creating paper collage through an online creative community challenge. Having really enjoyed that, I created my own Instagram challenge called Our Creative May and this gave me another month straight to play. From this, our IG creative community established the hashtag #ourcreativeselves to continue posting our creations. I immediately did another challenge in June and July creating daily postcard art for the #ICAD project.

Four months straight of daily creating and continuous authenticity had proven that I did have enough time to create and I was trustworthy. My creative indulgence grounded me and greatly dissipated more of my anxieties. As I continue to replace the slave-driving parent who preaches art as impractical with the compassionate empowering present parent, I recreate a trust in myself proving my word is good. Self-trust is the truest most important result of our authentic creativity.

As my anxiety diminished, I began to understand this powerful lesson of how creativity and anxiety cannot coexist, and how indulging one represses the other. Love and presence conquer fear.

Creative Soul Living

This profound understanding of the inverse relationship between creativity and anxiety, and knowing many others need permission to create too, led me to develop and lead a Creativity Workshop this past November of 2017. I believe that our permission to live more creatively is necessary and integral to us being wholehearted individuals. I believe less consumerism and more Creativism will heal the world as we find creative solutions to its problems.

Creative Soul Living is the term I use to describe my process of Wholehearted Living. I intentionally seek and share my life lessons, prioritize my creativity in all areas of my life, develop my self-trust, value authenticity, commit to self-care, am mindful and present, stay connected with my people, and intuit my grandest Why for being here. And while my Why continues to firm up and my path widens, I know I have fought to reach my here and now, gathering my lessons one lesson at a time.

My future “I can” will include more creativity workshops, e-books, and eventually a book about crafting our own life plans based on our life lessons. My inward soul work has brought me the gift of knowing me and that feels like permission to hope. Hope is what I want to share with the world through my writing.

Photos and artwork by Shalagh Hogan used with permission and thanks.

Key book companions along the way

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

Daring Greatly by Brené Brown

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David R Burns

Deep Work by Cal Newport

About Shalagh Hogan

Shalagh Hogan, said Shay-la, is a personal essayist, a blogger, a designer, an uber-creative, and mother to a five-year-old ginger girl and just turned teen boy. She resides in an ancient house on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, USA, and is always amazed and amused by life’s abundance of lessons. Thrice-weekly she shares the lessons she gathers on her blog at Shalavee.com (Chez La Vie was taken) and currently, Creativity is her Why. Follow her as @shalaghhogan on Facebook and Instagram.

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Further reading:

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Coaching as a skill

My skill-set I blend with coaching as a skill

Weaving skills together

Many unique blends of skills

Adding coaching to your skill-set

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NOTEs are an important aspect of the human experience that help point towards and awaken the desire, curiosity, and courage to explore more of what life could be.

So what are NOTEs?

What is the power of NOTEs?

The landscape of NOTEs

Working and transforming with NOTEs

The experience of reading The Power of NOTEs

Connecting with the power of NOTEs

Thought pieces + footnotes

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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

Negotiating major life transitions

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How can life coaching support you?

What is life coaching?

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Life Coaching with me – consult + life coaching series