Pro Bono Coaching

At the centre of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.

Lao Tzu

UPDATE at February 2018: Pro Bono Life Coaching opportunities are now fully subscribed – thanks to those who have expressed interest. But do still read ahead about the launch of Quiet Writing Coaching and my background! You can go to Work with me to find out about current opportunities!

I’m so excited today to be officially launching Quiet Writing Coaching with a limited number of pro bono life coaching opportunities for women!

It’s hard to believe that it’s nearly four months since I started the Beautiful You Coaching Academy Life Coaching course and received my learning resources with the most gorgeous, handwritten welcome note from our lead trainer and CEO of Beautiful You, Julie Parker.

Since that time, I’ve been studying and practicing coaching and I’m now ready to commence offering pro bono life coaching. This marks the official commencement of my coaching practice in the world – something I have been planning now for over a year. And I’m very excited!

In this post I will share my journey to this point, explain what life coaching is and what this pro bono coaching opportunity offers. I also want to share what I bring to coaching and who I see myself best supporting.

My journey to coaching

My decision to gain skills and experience in coaching is linked to writing. Writing and coaching are twin skills that I want to weave together to form a new path in my life. Writing is my creative focus and raison d’être, an area of my life where I would like to do so much more. But teaching and supporting people to reach their potential, especially creatively, has also been an area I have engaged in deeply through-out my working life.

I’ve worked with coaches in the workplace especially in partnership as a leader to help support the growth of my teams. I’ve been a mentor and I’ve been mentored in my work roles. When I decided I need to start making a transition to a new way of living and working last year, I reached out to a coach to support me at a critical time. And this has made all the difference in shaping this time. Thanks to my desire to change and thanks to my wonderful coach.

And as part of my coaching journey through Beautiful You, I’ve been working with a buddy coach where we have shared powerful learning and coaching experiences mutually as we embark on this adventure. It’s challenging times as a I work on this journey; my beautiful mum is very unwell and I am supporting her which is an emotional journey. I don’t write so much about this here as it’s private. But I’ve worked on my self-care and wellbeing as I move through this time so I can be strong and well especially for my mum but also for myself and others in my life. I am now so much healthier and stronger after this short time – swimming in the ocean a few times a week and back to yoga classes twice a week. Thanks to my commitment to change and thanks to my wonderful coach. Here is a picture of me on the left with my gorgeous and inspiring coach buddy, Jeanette.

Photo credit to Emma Louise Newby @emmalouisenewby

What is life coaching?

So as you can see life coaching can be an incredible support as we move through times of change and make a path to those goals that are in our heart. Especially those long term goals we have held very close.

Life coaching provides a structured and 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 I bring to coaching and where I want to focus

I’m choosing to focus on career and creativity coaching and I bring to that: extensive experience in adult and vocational education; certification in MBTI/personality type assessment; and a passion for creativity, writing and books that drives everything I do.

You can learn more about me here.

With my experience 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.

My introvert qualities help me work from writing as a strength and I believe everyone can shine in their own way. We just need to find the threads that pull our unique story together. That’s what I am keen to do with my coaching and writing work at Quiet Writing – to support people to find the threads of their story and shine.

And I’ve done the work. I’m finding the threads of my story and weaving them together too:

• I’ve sat in cafes and on trains before work, writing and studying poetry, to tap into that source and learn more.
• I’ve walked into work and felt like I’m leaving large parts of myself behind, the most important parts, and felt so sad about it. So I’m taking that feeling forward to plan a different future.
• I’ve woven creativity into my day job as much as I could, especially as a leader of innovative practice. I’ve learnt from this but there’s still so much more I want to be doing.
• I’ve listened to so many podcasts and read so many books! That will always be the way as I love learning. But it’s time for me to take these influences forward into my unique brand of coaching and writing work and live the life I want.

I’ve studied and worked and read and I’m keen to bring all these pieces together and find the gold threads and from there to make a new creatively based lifestyle.

It’s time for me to be more whole-hearted and coaching and writing are the keys to that. So I’m working through it all and I’m on the journey. And I’m keen to support you also on your journey to work on goals that bring more heart to what you do and what you want to do.

So how about you?

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

I feel especially called to work with women who:

• want to be more whole-hearted about the work they do; 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 they wish to take as a foundation and recast into a new vision and path;
• want to take the steps to create the life they want and to 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.

My pro bono life coaching offering

So, I am so excited to be offering my first pro bono life coaching opportunities right now to a small number of women as I step into my future as a coach and a writer.

As a coach in training, my plan is to start with a number of limited pro bono opportunities now and focus on them for the next few months.

What I am offering now is:

• the opportunity to work with me as your coach for a coaching series of 6 sessions over a 3 month period on areas that are important to you and your life path;
• a 30 minute consultation upfront to start the process to ensure we are a positive fit and to identify areas of possible focus to ensure maximum value from our sessions. You will be asked to fill out a short questionnaire prior to this first discussion.

In return, and in lieu of any monetary exchange for this pro bono coaching series offering, you need to provide:

• a (glowing) testimonial with a photo within one week of your coaching series finishing and
• a shout out where you can about the great experience you have had with me as your coach.

Once we have the 30 minute consultation, we will identify the dates and schedule for our sessions so we can make them a priority once an hour each fortnight.

In practical terms, I’m in Australia but you can be anywhere in the world. We would work via technology based services like Skype for our sessions.

As you can see, it’s all about my learning, the benefit to you of a fabulous and productive coaching series with me and the opportunity for me to launch my coaching work as positively as I can, building on my current experience and yours. A super win-win!

Where to contact me:

So I hope you are excited by what this might mean for you!

If you are interested in being considered for this coaching opportunity, noting that they are small in number and only available for a limited time, please contact me:

• 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 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.

Thought pieces

I usually finish my blog posts with thought pieces – related thoughts, symbols, references – being an intuitive with an associative mind, connections pop up and I like to include them here.

For today, it’s a tarot card – the beautiful Three of Earth – also known as the Three of Pentacles (Coins) from the recently released ‘The Good Tarot’ by Colette Baron-Reid.

I start my day with a tarot and oracle reading for guidance and sometimes I hesitate to do that first and feel I should get on with my work. Then I get the most helpful insights and the reminder from the cards that this is my work. The intuitive wisdom feeds deeply into my day and visions and what I can then share with others to inspire them.

Today’s question was about coaching, this pro bono coaching offer and how it fits with my vision and with yours.

So here is the beautiful Three of Earth:

How gorgeous are her butterfly glasses – transformative and seeing far into the future, grounded in the here and now, but lifting her gaze. Here are Colette Baron-Reid’s words on this card:

Teamwork, building on solid foundations, group efforts, dedicated collaboration

What I am building is grounded in a solid foundation, so I know I can trust it will not slip away suddenly. I am joined by others in coordinated efforts to bring forth what we have chosen to co-create. The architecture of my dreams is becoming tangible, taking shape before me, and I share my joy and pride with my partners and supporters. Teachers and students, we are all learning, growing, and building collaboratively.

It really is all about co-creation. My future and yours. Thank you for your support – it’s such a pleasure to learn, grow and build collaboratively with you. Let’s put on our butterfly glasses together and see our vision and shine!

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 Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).

Subscribe via email (see the link at the top and below) to make sure you receive updates from Quiet Writing and its passions in 2017. This includes tarot, MBTI developments, life coaching and other connections to help express your unique voice in the world.

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You might also enjoy:

Shining a quiet light: working the gifts of introversion

Intuition, writing and work: eight ways intuition can guide your creativity

Healing with words of gold: The Empress, Kintsugi and alchemy

Practical tools to increase writing productivity