Coach Approach

My friend Clare Norman, MCC (who's written several wonderful coaching books, including The Transformational Coach, which I highly recommend) has offered a guest blog for the Awaken community this week. The two of us have been having a joyful collaboration, sharing our thoughts on love and coaching. What a kindred spirit!

Clare writes: 

Love Doesn't Run Out

The word “uninhibited” keeps coming up for me in therapy. We were talking about how I show up in my marriage when my therapist asked about…

Group coaching, the Awaken way, where energy, income, and impact come into alignment. In community, coaches discover how to belong to themselves while creating spaces that transform others. 

Some people think coaching is about filling your calendar with individual sessions and constantly marketing to new people. That's how I started during my first two or three years as a coach, and parts of it were incredibly fulfilling. In fact, more than fifteen years in, I still love coaching a select few…

Transformational Coaching Begins Within: The Freeze Frame® Technique for getting unstuck

If you’re like me, sometimes you get stuck in ruminating, thoughts and feelings looping on repeat with no movement or positive action. It's exhausting. The brain seems to have a mind of its own, quickly pulling you down a path to nowhere.

Wouldn’t it be freeing to step back into presence, to find your way back to balance and choice?

One of my favorite practices for this is the Freeze Frame® technique, dev…

At Awaken, empowerment coaching is about more than individual change, it’s about belonging to yourself while finding strength in community.

I was in a coach training on a Friday afternoon with a man who considers himself a real champion of women's empowerment. At one point he taught our group of mainly women, "It's so important that I, as a white man, learn to give away my power."

From his perspective, I'm sure that felt true. To me, and the other women in the room, it felt gross. Something ab…

Transformational Coaching Begins Within: Centering and Grounding for Coaches

At Awaken, I’ve learned that transformational coaching always begins with the coach’s own inner work. Before you can guide others into presence, empowerment, or spiritual growth, you must first cultivate practices that root you in your own wholeness.

Two of the simplest, most powerful practices I return to again and again are centering and grounding. These aren’t just techniques for coaches, they are foundations for l…

We love poetry at Awaken - I've got quite a collection now that fits perfectly with some of our courses on emotions, values, beliefs, reality, identity, on love. Poetry seems to crack the heart wide open while strengthening the spine.

One of my favorite poems is an excerpt from John Roedel's The Anatomy of Peace: 

"If you are exhausted about

your heart’s obsession with

the fixed past and your mind’s focus

on the uncertain future

your lungs are the perfect place for you

there is no yesterd…

I was 17 years old. My hand was on the doorknob of Dr. Miles' office at Wheaton College. I was about to have a conversation that would end in me being expelled, and my life was about to be ruined. 

To understand the stakes, you'd have to know more of my backstory.

I was raised in the kind of utopian/dystopian household you could learn about if you watch the documentary "Shiny, Happy People" - a home in which punishment was swift and early, and rewards were meted out based on accomplishment and…

Nearly twenty years ago, I was introduced to "The Five A's." A simple but powerful framework in emotional healing: Attention, Acceptance, Appreciation, Affection, and Allowing.

These are the deep emotional nutrients we long for as human beings. It was so touching to me to find this framework, that I spent hours drawing the five A's, journaling with them, and committing to offering them to others.

They are what we all hope to receive from parents, friends, partners, and communities. And sometim…

I have the honor of offering regular Coaching Supervision sessions, often one-on-one, and regularly in groups. Supervision is a time of deep, sacred reflection - one I believe it's important to engage in throughout a coach's career. 

The types of questions I like to bring to coaching supervision are those that bring me more deeply to myself, and bring more awareness of how my subconscious instincts might be coming into play.

If you're a coach or another helping professional, or just a person w…

Earlier today, my computer went dark.

I’d been working quietly, deep in something that mattered to me. My laptop was plugged in, or so I thought. But the screen went black—no big drama, just quietly off.

After a moment of confusion, I checked the cord. It was snug in the laptop. Everything seemed right. But when I looked a little further, I noticed the plug had come loose from the wall. Not far—just a small shift—but enough to cut the connection.

Plugged in - but not at the source.

And someh…