work life Archives

How to be inclusive of introverts and extraverts in recruitment practices

January 20, 2021

Photo by **Christina Morillo** from **Pexels**

One of the challenges of being an introvert is that recruitment practices can feel oriented to more extraverted ways. Here are some strategies for being inclusive of both introverts and extraverts in recruitment for the best outcomes for both organisations and applicants.

Introvert and extravert are personality preferences

Introversion and extraversion are innate personality preferences according to Jungian theory and psychological type frameworks. They indicate the direction and source of our energy. Extraverts have a preference for the outer world and typically charge their batteries through social interaction. Introverts have a preference for the inner world of ideas and feelings and need solitude and quiet to collect their thoughts and refuel. As Jenn Granneman points out, introverts and extraverts are ‘wired differently’ around external rewards: ‘The introvert’s way isn’t about chasing rewards, but rather about seeking meaning.’ These are just preferences, not behavioural indicators, nor are they extreme in each person.

The Extravert Ideal and recruitment

So how do these preferences play out in the context of recruitment? Susan Cain in her book, Quiet, talks about The Extravert Ideal and how there is a general bias in the community towards people who are outgoing and gregarious. With studies showing that one third to a half of the US population are introverts, there are compelling reasons to review recruitment thinking and practices to check how inclusive they are. As many leaders and managers also self-identify as extraverts, there’s a risk that unintended biases can sneak into recruitment processes.

Across the spectrum of skills, leaders of recruitment strategies ideally want to ensure they find the best candidate match for any job role in terms of knowledge, skills and experience. But how do you ensure that the way you manage your recruitment is inclusive, enabling all applicants to show their best potential for the role?

Inclusive approaches to recruitment

Inclusive approaches to recruitment for introvert and extravert types need to be informed by:

Reflecting on the job roles we are recruiting to and checking for any unintentional bias in perceptions on the role itself.
Rethinking how recruitment practices can make space for both introvert and extravert preferences through a mix of assessment methods and styles.
Implementing practical strategies for being inclusive to get the best from all candidates in recruitment contexts.

Photo by **Marc Mueller** from **Pexels**

Reflecting on the job roles we are recruiting to

It’s important to start with the job description we are recruiting to so we can be sure there is no inherent bias in the personal requirements. This is challenging because some jobs seem to be inherently linked to particular character traits, like being outgoing and open. It’s vital to have a really good look at these assumptions.

Sales is one area that has become traditionally connected with and impacted by perceptions about introversion and extraversion. Here are some comments on a current website:

For example, if the profile for successful salesmen indicates that extroversion is a desirable characteristic, you had better be sure that you score highly on this trait if you want the job.

However, for almost all jobs, not just sales, employers prefer extroverts over introverts. The reasons given for this preference are firstly, around teamwork and the need to get on with people, and secondly, that people may become leaders in the future so it’s not just about technical skills.

This all appears to be based on the assumption that you need to be extraverted to be able to sell, to work in a team and to be a leader. Having performed all of these skills successfully as an introvert, I believe we need to challenge these types of stereotypes in thinking about positions and psychological traits.

Challenging stereotypes about key job functions

For example, in terms of sales, Daniel H. Pink explains in his book, To Sell is Human, we are all in sales:

People are now spending about 40 percent of their time at work engaged in non-sales selling— persuading, influencing, and convincing others in ways that don’t involve anyone making a purchase.

The art of sales is more complex than just being outgoing. It’s about influencing, listening and understanding others’ needs, areas in which introverts can be naturally strong.

In terms of teams, work units benefit from a mix of complementary personalities to be able to achieve organizational goals effectively. Diverse groups tend to outperform homogeneous groups, even if the members of the latter group are more capable. Furthermore, diversity fires up innovation.

The reality is that teams of like-minded people often come up with average results. Diverse teams, on the other hand, have been found to inspire original ideas and enable more market opportunities.
Gaia Grant, Do diverse teams produce more creative results?

And whilst there may appear to be more extraverted managers and leaders, introverted preferences such as a desire for solitude can be integral to breakthrough leadership skills such as clarity, emotional balance and moral courage. Lead Yourself First by Raymond M Kethledge and Michael S. Erwin provides case studies of famous leaders that describe how leadership and solitude are strongly aligned.

As these examples show, it’s important to reflect on and be aware of any implicit bias based on personality preferences around introversion and extraversion as they impact on job roles.

introverts and recruitment — Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Rethinking our recruitment practices to make space for preferences

One way to promote inclusion in recruitment practices is to ensure that the processes involve a mix of strategies that reflect both introvert and extravert preferences. The opportunity to assess candidates through writing, interview, references, group contexts, 1:1 discussion and practical skills assessment can all be considered to ensure that there is not a bias to one preference.

Even though there may be a mix of methods, face to face methods can somehow feel and be treated as pre-eminent and written aspects can seem secondary. It’s important to carefully consider the balance of all assessment inputs, not just the ones that seem more overtly influential.

It’s also important that recruitment methods appropriately reflect the job role across its gamut. If a role is primarily about research and writing, how are we assessing this. Is it by talking about it or by assessing research and writing ability? Perhaps the job is about training. How are we assessing all aspects of this skill and not just the standing up and talking part? Leadership might be key but are we also looking at self-leadership and how the leader recharges, clarifies their visions and thoughts and writes, as well as how well they can talk to a room of people? Lead Yourself First provides ample evidence that we certainly should be looking at all these areas of leadership.

Challenging stereotypes about job roles and recruitment can be effectively tackled by rethinking our assumptions behind the role and how we assess its competencies.

Inclusive strategies for getting the best from introverts in recruitment

Given the orientation towards the extraverted end of the spectrum, it’s worthwhile reflecting on inclusive strategies to enable both introverts and extraverts to do their best in recruitment situations.

Possible inclusive strategies for recruiters include:

Developing an understand of personality type and preferences and especially the impacts of introversion and extraversion in the workplace so you can bring the best out of all employees. This applies to both recruitment and wider organizational contexts.
Allowing a mix of recruitment techniques that will suit both types of preferences, noting that quiet influencing strategies include: writing, activities that involve preparation, focused conversation and engaged listening. See this Quiet Writing article for more on how introverts can make the most of recruitment opportunities.
Considering options that allow for preparation beforehand, even if brief, so that introverts can showcase their more reflective analytical skills rather than have to focus on thinking on their feet.
If assessing in group contexts, note that it’s not just about who talks the most but about how valuable the contribution is. Introverts, for example, may take the role of summing up a conversation or providing a single breakthrough idea at the end, rather than participating throughout the conversation. As Susan Cain points out, ‘research shows there’s no correlation between the most talkative person in the room and the best ideas.’
A focus on telling success stories which can be really powerful for all candidates and help to provide a more level playing field, as Mark Bregman suggests in Are Recruiters Biased Against Introverts.

At the end of the day, recruitment is an opportunity for people to showcase their skills to enable them to gain a position. The recruiting organisation wants to find the person who will meet their needs across all aspects of behavior. It’s important to ensure that the immediate contexts of recruitment are not a barrier between these desired outcomes. Let’s work to ensure all people have the chance to present their competencies, experience and qualities in the most positive light.

Author note

This post was originally a guest post for recruitment agency WorkSearch and published on their site in 2017. Their site is no longer live so it is reproduced here with minor amendments. Thanks to Bree Rackley for social media and guest posting support for the initial guest posting.

I hope these insights are helpful to you in being inclusive of both introvert and extravert preferences in recruitment. Reach out to me for coaching if you need some support at any time.

Warmest wishes

Terri

About the author, Terri Connellan

Terri Connellan is a certified life coach, author and accredited psychological type practitioner. She has a Master of Arts in Language and Literacy, two teaching qualifications and a successful 30-year career as a teacher and a leader in adult vocational education. Her coaching and writing focus on three elements—creativity, personality and self-leadership—especially for women in transition to a life with deeper purpose. Terri works with women globally through her creative business, Quiet Writing, encouraging deeper self-understanding of body of work, creativity and psychological type for more wholehearted and fulfilling lives. Her book Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition and the accompanying Wholehearted Companion Workbook were published in September 2021 by the kind press. She lives and writes in the outskirts of Sydney surrounded by beach and bush.

How to connect with me

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Read Wholehearted: Self-leadership for women in transition

Want to learn more about personality, creativity and self-leadership for positive transition to the life you desire?

Head over to read about my book Wholehearted and the accompanying Companion Workbook now.

Available in paperback and ebook from retailers listed here:

Wholehearted

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Further related reading on Quiet Writing:

wholehearted stories work life

From Halfhearted to Wholehearted Living – My Journey

March 29, 2019

This guest post from Emily Lewis looks at the journey of moving from half-hearted to wholehearted living.

This is the 17th 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, 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’m thrilled to have Emily Lewis as a ‘Wholehearted Stories’ contributor. Emily and I met via Instagram and other creative connections. In this story, Emily shares how she is embracing uncertainty and imperfection and questioning the “shoulds” in her life. In doing this, she is moving from half-hearted to wholehearted living. Emily also shares her brilliant photographs. Read on!

I’ll admit that when I first agreed to write a post here I didn’t have any idea what I would say. What is wholehearted living anyway? In the Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown says:

It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, no matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough. It’s going to bed at night thinking, Yes I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.

I’ve read Gifts, and other definitions, but somehow the guideposts never really stuck with me. I’m not terribly compassionate or patient, I have no idea what it means to play instead of work, and I’m terrible at cultivating consistent gratitude. I’m not sure if I have any faith in a higher power. I tend more to be grumpy, bitchy or bitter, frequently irritated or anxious and feeling guilty on top of it since overall my life is not at all bad. I am certain all of those things are what wholehearted is not.

I think, perhaps, I’ve been living half-heartedly, living according to a series of “shoulds” and being more concerned with what the world thinks of me when I actually do follow what is in my heart and gut. Many of the people who voiced their generally well-intentioned opinions throughout my life were not wrong in their assertions, but that did not mean they were right for me.

Impacts of living halfheartedly

I never wanted to move to Maryland. I never really wanted to be a landscape architect either. But during his time in academia, my father had seen too many students struggle to make ends meet after graduation and thought it would be a good direction to pursue. It was clear during design school many of my professors didn’t think I had what it took to make it in the profession. And in a way, they may have been right. The skills that most of the top students had – graphics, site design – were not where I excelled. I preferred a combination of natural resources and liberal arts but was determined that since I started the program, I should finish it. Then I’d figure out what to do.

Before I moved to Annapolis, I had been to the state all of twice. I thought I’d stay a couple of years then join the Peace Corps or go to grad school somewhere far away. I tried to leave after a few months, but the recession hit and nothing materialized. When I transferred offices to work on a major project, I vowed I’d finish out my role, no matter what. Much like I vowed to stick with my major in the first place. Because good students and good employees finish what they start.

That project finished and I should have felt free. But by then I was marrying my husband, who was new to the area and didn’t want to move again. So instead of applying to the University of Oregon or Pennsylvania for a Master’s degree, I looked into local programs where I could continue to work full time. We bought a house and the day the bank approved our offer I cried because now I was stuck. Once we realized we really did want to move, we decided to be responsible and try to pay off all our student loans before doing so. Twelve years later, I’m still half-heartedly living in a place I wanted to leave after six months, struggling which what I “should” do instead of following my heart.

Being done with “shoulds”

Somewhere along the way, I paused and realized how deeply unhappy I was. In December 2014 I was at a bookstore looking for a Christmas present for my dad when I saw a book called Paris Letters. The author, Janice MacLeod, asks the question “How much money does it take to quit your job?” and then moves to Paris.

It started a process of slow consideration over the next few months of asking myself a series of questions. What am I doing here? Why am I staying in this job that hasn’t helped me grow in four years, just left me with empty promises and fits of crying every morning before I get out of the car? Because I “should” take advantage of the money they are giving me for grad school, at a program I enrolled in because I “should” work full time while I go to school, because I always felt obligated to follow a particular career direction? What if I changed? Who might I become?

I remember the exact moment when I first decided I was done with the shoulds. I was in the bathroom of an airplane somewhere over the Rocky Mountains looking not just at myself in the mirror, but down at my whole life, laid out 10,000 feet below me, and I asked myself “What the hell are you waiting for?” I was reading Wild by Cheryl Strayed on that plane ride, a story about picking yourself the fuck up and DOING something with your life, and something started to crack slowly inside of me.

Small cracks to big cracks

Have you ever noticed that a small crack inevitably leads to bigger cracks? It’s why we design sidewalks and buildings with control joints, to tell the crack where it will and will not go, but we can’t design our own life that way.

I didn’t know on that plane ride, or in that book store, that this tiny crack would split wide open in ways I could never imagine over the next four years. That it would include two job changes, three transAtlantic trips, depression, infidelity, a friend’s suicide, and that I would eventually stop trying to patch myself up, like a slipshod repair job, but rather go all the way to the deepest part of the wound and learn to heal from the inside out. I didn’t know that this was the process of becoming whole, that it’s an ongoing process and I would keep finding new places that needed to be healed. Sometimes these things fester until something happens to bring them to the surface.

I had a moment in the early fall of 2015, while out in the woods measuring trees for a stream restoration project when suddenly I knew I wanted no part of the path I had been following. Not the job, not grad school, not Maryland. I had been trying so hard to plan every bit of my life and you can’t live wholeheartedly if you are willing your life to stick to a plan. In that moment I broke down and spiralled into a depression that lasted for months, where not a day went by that I didn’t weep out of hopelessness and despair and consider ending it all. There was no more plan.

Forgoing the shoulds

Slowly and tentatively I began to talk to select people about how I was struggling. A friend sent me the book Let Your Life Speak by Parker J Palmer who eloquently described what I could barely grasp at:

Sometimes the “shoulds” do not work because the life one is living runs crosswise to the grain of one’s soul. At that time in my life, I had no feeling for the grain in my soul and no sense of which way was crosswise….Had I not followed my despair…I might have continued to pursue a work that was not mine to do, causing further harm to myself, to the people and projects with which I worked, and to a profession that is well-worth doing – by those who are called to do it.

I decided to forego the “shoulds”. Maybe I should have stayed in that job longer, but I knew I was done and I didn’t want to look to the past or the future but rather stay in the present and what I needed in my soul at the time. Maybe I should have quit the volunteer Board of Directors position, but those people have become the closest friends and family I’ve known and can rely on. Maybe I should quit traveling so much and stay put a little more often; I’ve gotten used to people questioning how much I travel, but it what makes me feel alive.

When others question me, it is their own fears they vocalize and too often I let that hold me back or put up my defences, determined to show them that I am right. Everything from what I majored in to where I lived to what I did in my spare time was a “should do” for far too long.

What do I know

With so many unknowns, what do I know? I know that while there have been parts of my life that have been wonderful, there are also parts of it that have been toxic to me. I often wonder, if I stayed at home more, physically more, would it be better? Would I be happier? But WOULD I ever actually stay here more, even if I were less busy, less committed to friends and family and adventures around the country?

Perhaps part of me will always feel the need to be on the go and doing something. Do I leave because I don’t want to be here or do I not want to be here because I always leave? Am I still trying to be someone I am not, that I feel I should be? I posed this question to my husband, Todd. He responded, kindly, “I think you will always want to be on the move. If you tried to stay in one place you wouldn’t be you. You were born to wander.”

So where am I now, emotionally and physically? That’s a complicated question, but I think I am getting closer to the answer, part of which is “I don’t know.” But I do. And I don’t. This chapter of my life is closing, and like all good chapters, it’s emotional, like the end of Deathly Hallows before the Epilogue when you know there’s more to the story but you’re not ready for this part of it to end.

What I want

I want to fully love and live and mourn this chapter so I can wholly move into the next one. I don’t want to allude to things anymore. I want to be real. I have been halfheartedly living in the Chesapeake, trying to be something I have never felt connected to on a soul level. I’ve tried for 17 years to convince myself I could do this particular work and live in this particular place and I can’t. I want to feel alive and I feel alive when I am around art, around animals, in nature, in the mountains. Less people, less frenetic pace of life.

I’m not a “hustle” mentality. I want to equally work hard and play hard and rest hard and love hard and I don’t have room for that when I’m full of irritation and stress and anxiety in this place. I’ve never really felt healthy or whole here and it’s devastating to say that out loud, especially when I don’t yet have the answers to what’s next. I’ve always wanted to completely plan out my life and I don’t think that’s in the cards. I’m scared as hell and want to weep and leap for joy at the same time.

What is next

I’ve always wanted to pack up and just go and see what adventure is waiting around the next turn. I’ve secretly always wanted to stop being so damn responsible and just take a risk. Fear and obligation and what I “should” do stopped me every time.

The Green Mountains have been calling my name since I crossed the state line into Vermont in late May nine years ago. I remember a coworker saying they weren’t sure I was going to come back from that trip and part of me never did. There are pieces of my soul scattered around this world and it’s time I went and reconnected with one of them. I’ll be okay, I’ll be fine, not knowing what the future holds. No matter what happens, I tried. I got up in the morning and went to bed at night knowing that I was still brave and worthy of love and belonging. I will be enough because instead of listening to the “shoulds” I did what I wanted to do. Should I move? Should I find a new career? I don’t know. But do I want to? Yes. And that is enough.

Key book + podcast companions along the way

Radical Acceptance – Tara Brach

The Gifts of Imperfection – Brené Brown

Let Your Life Speak – Parker J Palmer

Big Magic – Elizabeth Gilbert

Paris Letters – Janice MacLeod

Harry Potter – J.K. Rowling

Wild – Cheryl Strayed

This I Know: Notes on Unraveling the Heart – Susannah Conway

Finding Ultra – Rich Roll

The Runner’s Guide to the Meaning of Life – Amby Burfoot

The Artist’s Way – Julia Cameron

Tranquility du Jour Podcast – Kimberly Wilson

Another White Dash (song) – Butterfly Boucher

About Emily Lewis

Emily Lewis is a lover of travel, books, and trees who feels equally at home deep in the city or out in the country. She is passionate about environmental issues, art, and writing. Her photography explores both people and landscape, capturing the juxtaposition of nature and man-made, wild and urban, light and color, to show the often-overlooked details of life. She is a professional landscape architect with a Masters in environmental science and moonlights as a financial director and photographer. You can see her work and connect with her on her website www.emilylewiscreative.com or via Instagram.

Feature image by Diana White Photography

Other photographs taken and provided by Emily Lewis, used with permission and thanks.

Keep in touch + free Reading Wisdom Guide

You might also enjoy my free ‘Reading Wisdom Guide for Creatives, Coaches and Writers‘ with a summary of 45 wholehearted books to inspire your own journey. Just pop your email address in the box below.

You will receive access to the Wholehearted Library which includes the Reading Wisdom Guide and so much more! Plus you’ll receive monthly Beach Notes with updates and inspiring resources from Quiet Writing. This includes writing, personality type, coaching, creativity, tarot, productivity and ways to express your unique voice in the world.

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

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.

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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.

How to be more aware of the value of cognitive diversity in the workplace

April 14, 2018

This post shares recent insights from neuroscience, neurodiversity and the ABC TV show, Employable Me, about the importance of valuing cognitive diversity.

Insights from neuroscience and neurodiversity show us there are many ways to approach tasks, teamwork, workplace projects, and recruitment solutions. Valuing cognitive diversity in personality type, cognitive preferences, and brain makeup is an area that has had limited attention in the past. Enlightened workplaces, leaders and human resources practitioners are realizing there is much to be gained from considering these issues and strategies that embrace cognitive diversity.

Recent insights from neuroscience and neurodiversity help inform these approaches. Case studies of job seekers and employer perspectives in the ABC’s Employable Me series also highlight the valuable outcomes when cognitive strengths rather than weaknesses are the focus.

In this post, I share:

insights from my recent WorkSearch guest post exploring this issue
learning from neuroscience workshops with UCLA professor and author, Dario Nardi, including the experience of brain-imaging via EEG
the experience of watching ABC’s Employable Me series and reflecting on jobseeker experiences and employer attitudes.

WorkSearch guest post on cognitive diversity

I’ve recently explored these issues in detail in a guest post over at WorkSearch. In This is how to be more aware of the superior value of neurodiversity in the workplace, I discuss the following:

difference as a source of strength and heterogeneity in the workforce as a value to be embraced rather than a challenge to be overcome;
the value of cognitively diverse and inclusive workplaces;
insights from neuroscience about the value of recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of different cognitive functions;
insights from neurodiversity about valuing the diversity of different brain types and the special gifts they can bring;
some of the ways diversity based on personality and cognitive preference can work for us and for organizations; and
ways to identify your “team’s brain” to see the natural cognitive terrain it covers and whether it is diverse or not.

Here is the article – so head over to WorkSearch and have a read. Welcome your thoughts and feedback here!

This Is How To Be More Aware Of The Superior Value Of Neurodiversity In The Workplace

Learnings from neuroscience workshops with Dr Dario Nardi

I had the pleasure of attending two workshops with award-winning UCLA professor and author, Dario Nardi, as part of the proceedings of the Australian Association for Psychological Type Conference in Sydney in October 2017. Dario Nardi’s work focuses on the neuroscience of personality and using brain imaging via EEG technology to see how the brain works as it undertakes different activities. I had the opportunity to see brain imaging in action and also to undergo my own brain imaging session. Here is a picture of my brain in action!

The EEG and aligned computer analysis help to show the relationship between the brain and tasks. It shows the brain regions that link together as networks and which regions of the brain we favour. The research also shows the links between brain activity and personality type, especially the eight cognitive functions described by Carl Jung in the 1920’s.

It’s fascinating to see how the rich framework that Jung developed on the basis of conversations with patients is now borne out in ways we can directly observe via technology.

As Dario Nardi says in his book, Our Brains in Colour:

The brain is like an orchestra that usually plays our favourite songs.

Through the workshops, we worked to identify:

the regions of the brain we personally rely on most
how this links to personality type and cognitive preferences
cognitive diversity within our workshop group and different ways to process information
insights from learning other ways to process information
brain-savvy coaching approaches for ourselves and others to embrace cognitive diversity
the value of drawing on non-preferences to strengthen cognitive resources and new habits
how we can ‘prime’ ourselves to learn new ways of extending into unfamiliar cognitive areas
how this conscious development of cognitive diversity is a form of self-leadership.

The value of cognitive diversity in workplace approaches

An underlying theme in all of this is the value of cognitive diversity. A driving issue for me based on my own workplace experiences is that a focus on the neurotypical or dominant paradigm can disadvantage some people.

An example is the typical approaches to recruitment and talent acquisition that favour interviews as a dominant mode of selection. As any introvert knows, this type of approach is unlikely to bring out the best in them as an applicant. In two posts for WorkSearch, I’ve explored this issue from the perspective of both applicants and recruiters:

How to make the most of the right recruitment opportunities as an introvert

This is what happens when recruiters make inclusion mistakes (and how to avoid it)

In these pieces, I’ve encouraged a more inclusive approach to recruitment processes to enable all people to bring their best skills to bear. This also means recruiters are more likely to get the best person for the job without the recruitment process itself being a barrier or filter.

Neurodiversity and perspectives from Employable Me

It’s been fascinating to watch the first two episodes of the ABC’s excellent Employable Me series in this light. This series focuses on job seekers with disabilities and how they seek to show their capabilities. It follows people with neuro-diverse conditions such as autism, OCD & Tourette syndrome in their search for meaningful work. Drawing on science and insights from experts, the extraordinary and unique skills of the job seekers are explored.

It makes insightful viewing as the jobseekers’ deeper strengths are identified and as they seek to find a place in society where they can contribute. This is enhanced by employers taking an approach that values the individual and diversity. It means looking at options like removing barriers such as irrelevant interviews in favour of the hands-on demonstration of skills.

With the support of workplaces and employers that value cognitive diversity, the job seekers showcase their exceptional skills. This includes incredible short-term memory skills such as remembering 15 random words in sequence after hearing them once, forensic ability to identify errors in computer games coding and encyclopaedic geographical knowledge. Matching these outstanding skills to the right workplace means working positively through potential barriers.

It was refreshing to hear job seeker Tim’s new employer say that a number of their computer games analysts are autistic as they have a special gift for the task. Fabulous also that as an employer they have shifted from interviews to the practical demonstration of skills. This is because interviews are not helpful for understanding the strengths of job seekers with autism. Job seeker Tim, who found it incredibly hard to travel to work because of the practical and sensory challenges, can do this work from home.

More than one way to do it

As Larry Wall, creator of the Perl open software program, quoted in Steve Silberman’s history of autism, Neurotribes says:

There is more than one way to do it.

This has been my learning as I have taken a deeper dive into cognitive diversity from a neuroscience and neurodiversity perspective. It’s easy to think our way is the best or the only way. Easy also to view traditional approaches to problems or situations as the only options.

I have found from these experiences that being open to cognitive diversity in ourselves and in others can be:

a form of personal growth and self-leadership
an insight into our strengths and gifts and those of others
a way of developing our non-preferred cognitive functions so we can be more well-rounded
a way of being more open-hearted and mindful of the skills and experiences of others
a deeper way to see our interactions, teams and workplaces as rich sources of cognitive and interpersonal learning.

This enables us and others to contribute more fully to society as we personally grow and develop. And this means richer and more cognitively diverse experiences and outcomes for us all.

I hope you enjoy the insights from reading this piece and also the links within it. I look forward to sharing my deep-dive personality type offerings with you soon to enrich your self-knowledge and cognitive diversity.

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

All of my featured writing can be found here.

You can download my free 95-page ebook on the 36 Books that Shaped my Story – just sign up with your email address in the box to the right or below. You will also receive updates from Quiet Writing and its passions. This includes personality type, coaching, creativity, writing, tarot and other connections to help express your unique voice in the world.

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Grief and pain can be our most important teachers – a wholehearted story

March 1, 2018

This guest post from Kerstin Pilz is about how grief and pain can be our most important teachers on our journey to wholehearted living.

This is the seventh 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 Kerstin Pilz as a ‘Wholehearted Stories’ contributor. My sincere thanks to Kerstin for sharing her story and photographs. Kerstin’s wholehearted story tells of how she moved from passion through to grief and loss and then to deep healing. It’s a story of learning ways to heal through silence, meditation, yoga, writing and living freely. Kerstin now employs her learning from her journey to help others through her work as a writer, yogini, meditation practitioner and online teacher. Read on to find out more!

Beginning the journey

My journey to a wholehearted life began exactly a decade ago with a tragic false start.

I’d sailed around the world aboard a converted cruise ship for four months, teaching intercultural communication to university students from all over the world.

Copies of Eat, Pray, Love circulated onboard. It was hot off the press and everybody but me seemed to be reading it. I’d recently found love and I was busy writing the next chapter of my own life.

Between port calls in Capetown and Barcelona, my Italian sweetheart and I got married off the coast of West Africa, 1 degree south of the equator.

I was living a fairytale. Even before our final disembarkation, I knew that I couldn’t go back to my old life.

I had a tenured, senior position as Head of Italian Studies at one of Sydney’s Universities. It came with good pay and annual trips abroad. Options to climb the career ladder beckoned.

But there was a side of me that was unexpressed. Ever since I was a little girl I’d wanted to be a writer. Leaving Germany at age 22 to explore the world, had muted my writing voice. But the passion had remained.

At 45 I had enough academic publications to prove to myself that I could really write in a foreign language. It was time to explore another, more creative part of myself.

Taking an adult gap year to follow my passion

Long service leave allowed me to take an ‘adult gap year’ to chase a new, wholehearted life. I had a year to work out if I could transition into blogging and freelance writing.

Months of careful planning went into preparing my sabbatical. I booked a Spanish course in Buenos Aires and stopovers in exotic locations. I did evening courses in freelance writing and photography. I fired off pitches for travel writing assignments and started my first blog.

When I handed the keys to the tenants who’d be living in our home for the next 12 months, I felt a pinch of foreboding. We’d planned the perfect year. What could possibly go wrong?

You can’t prepare for life’s worst-case scenario

On the day of our long-awaited departure, my husband felt a pea-sized lump behind his ear. We’d forgotten to plan for life’s worst-case scenario.

He knew straight away that we’d be going on a very different journey – one from which he was unlikely to return.

And just like that, my world imploded. One day I was about to step into the year of my creative transformation. The next day I walked into the nightmare of a progressive terminal illness – metastatic melanoma – and all that it entailed.

Photo credit: Susan Kelly, Natural Images

Without a home to return to, we were forced to live with his adult daughter. Instead of speaking Spanish in Buenos Aires, I became trapped in an Italian melodrama. It unfolded across two continents as an antagonistic family came together in pain and anger.

I’d wanted to write a new chapter for myself and here it was. Except I hadn’t written it. Trying to fit into this alien scenario and its shifting emotional alliances slowly eroded my own identity.

I was unable to read and I was unable to write the travel and lifestyle pieces I’d researched. My own story consumed all of me. I became paralysed by the fear of death and the prison of toxic family dynamics.

Being a full-time carer to my gradually diminishing husband, gave me a sense of purpose and joy, despite the exhaustion.

Eventually, we relocated to a beach-side home in Far North Queensland, but the Italian melodrama never went away.

It was as if a second cancer had spread. Emotions and estates were negotiated amid the tragic suicide of my husband’s son and the discovery of my husband’s infidelities.

Photo credit: Susan Kelly, Natural Images

The healing power of writing

I discovered the healing power of writing by accident. Living remotely, I didn’t have easy access to counselling. My journal became my on-call therapist.

Watching my life implode felt like watching a movie in slow motion. It had more plot twists than I could’ve ever come up with.

I wrote my story in mad, obsessive bursts. Naming my pain and anger felt liberating. Without noticing, I started to treat journaling like a creative writing assignment. The many hospital visits – flogging the old car for long distances across the wild remoteness of Far North Queensland during an epic wet season – became little vignettes. Creating word pictures was intuitive. Trying to capture the irony of my situation, finding beauty in pain, was a form of therapy.

Writing allowed me to become a detached witness as my story unfolded amid the ruins of Rome and the Sardinian coastline of my husband’s homeland.

In my journal the dramatic settings and the ongoing family feud wove into an epic tale. For several years I thought of it as a blueprint for a novel.

Following my intuition to find the trail to a wholehearted life

My second attempt at creating a self-directed life started somewhere in the pages of my journal.

When I accepted that death was inevitable, my writing showed me that this was a chance for deep transformation. If I was open to it.

I knew that to find myself again, I could not slip back into my old life. For two decades I’d taught Italian Studies at universities. Italian was the language I spoke at home after I’d left Germany. But the Italian part of my identity died with him.

I needed a new identity and a new professional direction, but I had no clue where to find it. My sabbatical year had been spent being a full-time carer. Resigning from a tenured position in mid-life was considered foolish. Everybody cautioned against it, but I followed my heart.

I was scared and at my emotional rock-bottom, when I stepped into the unknown.

Learning about the impermanence of everything

I’d planned to give myself a few months to grief quietly surrounded by my beautiful community in remote Far North Queensland. The remoteness made me feel safe. I would have time to consider the next steps. But life had another dramatic instalment in store for me.

Less than three weeks after the funeral I was asked by State Emergency to evacuate my beachfront home. The biggest cyclone in living memory hauled all night, blowing my beach-side haven to pieces. The next day an entire community was grieving. Overnight, my own grief became eclipsed by tales of lost homes and devastated gardens.

When the airport re-opened, I caught the first flight out. The devastated landscape was a mirror of my inner devastation. I needed to look at things that were whole, not broken. I needed to speak to people who weren’t grieving.

Meditation and yoga became fundamental tools of my healing

For many months I didn’t speak at all. I locked myself away in austere meditation retreats all over Asia. Meditation, like writing, became fundamental to my healing.

Sitting in stillness, listening deep inside, trained me to recognise the voice of my inner knowing. It took months for the noise in my head to subside. Vipassana meditation taught me to become a detached observer. Watching pain and physical discomfort rise and fall for 10 hours a day for many weeks, was healing.

Everything in life is impermanent. Nature’s fury had already hammered home this fundamental Buddhist lesson. But I needed to hear it again and again from my teachers.

Sitting in the presence of His Holiness for two weeks in Bodhgaya, I learned about the true nature of suffering. Pain is inevitable. My story wasn’t unique.

Yoga was another important anchor in my healing journey. My body became grounded through asanas. Living with death had made me tired and skinny. I didn’t sleep enough and I drank too much red wine. Yoga made my body stronger. Conscious breathing felt like reviving a dead tree. I was finally breathing oxygen back into myself.

Finding my writing voice through journaling

The landscape of my beach-side home has healed itself, as have I. After sadness has followed joy. I now know that deep pain can fade if we allow ourselves to heal.

A sealed plastic box with two dozen moleskines is still the first thing I’ll throw into the back of my car the moment a cyclone warning goes out. I am no longer defined by my pain, but I keep my journals safe because they are an important record of my transformation as a writer.

For the two years of my husband’s slow decline and during the years of my healing journey, I wrote compulsively. I told the same story over and over until I was finally free of it. It trained my writing muscle like nothing else could have.

I haven’t opened my diaries for some time, but I know they contain some of my best writing. It’s raw and straight from the core.

Finding joy after grief and pain

Ten years after my first attempt at a life-changing sabbatical, I feel happier than I ever have. Going through the fires of grief has transformed me at my very core.

The journey was long and lonely. Crashing head-first into my own vulnerability has taught me that we can rise strong after falling hard.

It took many years to find a new professional direction. I revived my old travel blog. I worked as a Volunteer for International Development in the Maldives. I reviewed luxury resorts as a travel writer. All of it was fun, but none of it satisfied my core.

For several years I exhausted myself, trying to prove that resigning from a flourishing career in mid-life hadn’t been foolish. I was surprised by how naked I felt without a career.

Giving myself permission to heal, was met with envy. It was considered a self-indulgent luxury. And yet, the inner work I did in the aftermath of those events, laid the foundations for what I do today.

When I finally allowed myself to be guided by the voice of my heart, not the expectations of an achievement-driven society, things started to fall into place.

A new partner walked into my life. A new domain name appeared in the pages of my journal. I finally saw a new way to combine my passions of writing, travelling and yoga with my professional skills. I identified an income stream that allows me to be location independent.

I taught myself basic graphic design, photography and how to build a website. I did a yoga teacher training course. I radically decluttered my house and listed it on Airbnb. Then I packed a small suitcase and headed to Vietnam to make my dwindling funds last a little longer.

Today I live for most of the year in a rented home in the beautiful World Heritage town of Hoi An in central Vietnam.

I’ve always loved teaching and I am finally teaching again. Sharing the tools that have helped me in my healing journey is deeply rewarding.

In Hoi An I lead a weekly writing group. With my partner, who is a professional musician, I teach yin yoga and sound bowl meditations. Once a month we combine it with journaling in our signature “Journey to Self” workshop. Through my website, Write Your Journey, I run online courses. My first writing retreat will be held in Hoi An, this September.

After years of stagnating, I gained momentum when I allowed the voice of my heart to write the next chapter of my life.

Living a wholehearted, self-directed life is the only way to live the nanosecond we have on this earth. But make no mistake, it’s not the easy option.

People tell me all the time how lucky I am. But luck had nothing to do with it. Hard work, the courage to follow my passion and being open to uncertainty is what allows me to live the way I do.

PS: I wrote this post lying on my daybed on a tropical summer’s day with this view in front of me.

Photos by Kerstin Pilz, except where noted and used with permission and thanks.

Key book companions along the way

While my own story unfolded into a story of grief, I found it very hard to read fiction. Instead I found solace in memoirs about grief, in the words of Buddhist masters and in Natalie Goldberg’s zen-inspired writing practice.

Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness

Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, On Death and Dying

C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

Helen Garner, The Spare Room

Claire Bidwell-Smith, The Rules of Inheritance

Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones, Freeing the Writer Within

About Kerstin Pilz

Kerstin Pilz Phd is a former academic, writer, photographer, yogini and meditation practitioner based in Hoi An, Vietnam, where she teaches a weekly writers group and holds workshops and multi-day retreats combining yoga, writing and mindfulness meditation. Through her website Write Your Journey she offers e-courses and downloadable guided soundbowl meditations. Follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

Keep in touch + free ebook ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’

You might also enjoy my free 95-page ebook ’36 Books that Shaped my Story’ – all about wholehearted self-leadership, reading as creative influence and books to inspire your own journey.

Just pop your email address in the box to the right or below. You will receive the ebook straight away as well as updates and inspiring resources from Quiet Writing on personality type, coaching, creativity, writing, tarot, productivity and ways to express your unique voice in the world.

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

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