Disconnection and Self-doubt

Up until that point, I had been feeling very disconnected from myself and what I truly wanted in life. I knew what I wanted in an ideal scenario and yet I wasn’t able to get myself to move forward.

There were days when I really couldn’t find the will to get myself out of bed to do something productive, and I was beating myself up inside for not having been able to change my situation. At age 29, this was a feeling that I had been dealing with, in some form or another, for 10 years or so.

• I had quit my job to start an online business before that, but ended up eating through my savings and never putting energy towards anything creative.
• I felt I had studied the wrong degrees and wasn’t well-prepared for the kind of career I wanted.
• I felt ashamed that I wasn’t where I wanted to be in my relationships and dating life.
• I had business ideas that I couldn’t get myself to act on. I was setting goals but they were so perfectionistic that I never wanted to look at them because I felt that I could never really achieve them.
• I didn’t have confidence in the idea that I could take action to improve my situation in any kind of meaningful way.

Perfection was my standard, and everything that would fall below it wouldn’t even be worth trying. I knew that the past several years had been imperfect, and I felt that the present was imperfect, so I felt defeated before I had even gotten started.

First Steps

A few weeks later, I got Lynda’s number from my friend and scheduled an appointment.

We spent the first session getting up-to-speed on where I was at, and where I wanted to be. We captured all kinds of mental and emotional blockers that seemed to be holding me back. She wrote out all of these in point-form on a dry-erase board and allowed me to keep these notes with a cell phone picture afterwards.

We had captured a snapshot of “before” coaching to be improved upon over the course of the following year.

I decided to open to the possibility of might come from doing this work. This choice was my first step at doing something new and different.

Rediscovering Wholeness

I was excited that Life Coaching might provide a different approach that emphasized my strengths and my ability to surmount anything difficult that I had been through.

I wanted to experience a relationship that would allow me to feel fully whole again.

Our coaching relationship started with a building of trust. As I got to know Lynda in the way that she coached, I began to share my inner conflicts, my negative thoughts about myself, and even, after a time, certain instances where I felt deeply ashamed of myself.
In the process, I received nothing but empathy, attentiveness, kindness and support.

I learned, through her perspective, to see myself not as a failed and shameful person, but as a person who had gone through some very difficult times and who could learn to be more self-compassionate and open to new possibilities.

I learned that I could look at negative situations not as things to “get through” but “get from”.

Lynda taught me to ask questions like:

•  “How can I use this?”
•  “How can I make this work in my favour?”
•  “How can I find a win here?”
•  “Is this [disempowering and negative thought] true?”
• She assigned me homework to write a list of 100 ways that I could “be in choice”.

Slowly my eyes began to open to the control that I had in my life — control that I had previously felt was lost forever.

Changes

After a few months, my family noticed a difference in me.

Lynda was a valuable lifeline during that period of time in my life. She always responded to me with a mix of empathy, kindness, understanding and challenges to look at things differently in her responses.

Thanks to my coaching with Lynda:

• I’m better able to take the necessary risks of small actions, without any guaranteed outcomes, to grow and meet my goals and make things “better” even if they aren’t perfect.
• I’m dating more, where I hadn’t dated for a couple of years.
• I’m fully employed, earning money, paying off debts.
• I find it easier to get into action than before, when I couldn’t even get myself to do one productive thing during the day.
• I’m more open to new and spontaneous experiences.
• I’m more open to myself and my own emotions.
• I’m kinder and more compassionate with myself.
• I’m more aware of and taking ownership of my worth, in dating, in the social world and in the job market.
• I’m more aware of the emotionally-driven patterns that have held me back up to this point.
• I’ve learned to begin acknowledging and meeting my own needs without feeling “needy”.
• I’ve learned to respect and admire the efforts that I’m putting in to improve my life, even though I had been stuck for a long time.
• I discovered that I need to be creative to thrive in life.
• I discovered how to take into account both my emotions and thinking in decision-making, to connect with a kind of inner-intuition.
• I’m less impulsive in my decision-making.
• I respect and account for my emotions and needs more than I did before.
• I’m far happier overall.

What I valued most about working with Lynda was being able to share exactly where I was at without needing to worry about feeling ashamed or defective.

She allowed me to question my assumptions, ask new questions, own my emotions and needs and become aware of the thoughts, patterns and reactions that went into my present situation.

Because of her coaching, I’ve been able to open myself up to new ways of looking, feeling, thinking and acting in my life — in ways that have benefitted how I feel about myself, my financial situation, my willingness to engage with and live my life more fully, genuinely and authentically.