Coach Approach Blog

Those of you who know me well remember that I struggled for about eight years with panic attacks. I remember being nine months pregnant, walking the halls of the Rayburn building in Washington, DC to convince the powers that be to enact a piece of legislation that would benefit my company. 

I was exhausted, but kept pushing myself to do more, to impress and to succeed. I was constantly overwhelmed and stressed by the demands of my daily life. Every morning, I would wake up feeling anxious and a…

In chapter 4 of Rising Strong, Brené Brown writes,

"The opposite of recognizing that we’re feeling something is denying our emotions. The opposite of being curious is disengaging. When we deny our stories and disengage from tough emotions, they don’t go away; instead, they own us, they define us. Our job is not to deny the story, but to defy the ending—to rise strong, recognize our story, and rumble with the truth until we get to a place where we think, Yes. This is what happened. This is my tr…

As I've been lying around blowing my nose and recovering from a bad head cold, I'm feeling so grateful for the sacred spaces I can see from my bed. 

On a bookshelf across from me, I can see a little collection of arranged items:

• A photo of my husband and me, representing the young love we experienced in Paris when we were newly married.
• A blue lantern shining forth my core values of community and grace - gifted to me by a group I led in Brene Brown's Rising Strong course in Kenya.
• A Tibeta…

If you've got a thought that keeps coming back, is holding you back, or you just feel gross when you think it, why not try a hilarious way to hear yourself thinking? 

Let's say, for example, you have a thought that sounds something like this: 

• "I'll never be able to do that."
• "I'm not that smart."
• "I'm too old/young for that."
• "I'm not good enough." 
• "I just can't figure things out."
• "I'm so confused."

What if you try playing around with how that thought (remember, it's a thought, no…

Pardon my French. It seems like swearing and F-bombs are par for the course in a lot of blogs and newsletters I receive, and I really admire all those of you who can swear like sailors, but I'm just not very good at it yet. So, you'll probably see words like "m*ckety-mucks" in my writing. Sorry, not sorry.

But I digress. We were going to talk about how we know things. Like that thing, we all know about men.

Let's start with something simpler than men. Like a ball.

I know what a ball is like. …

One day, I was walking down a woodland path, enjoying the sun shining to my left onto the pond, and the peaceful sounds of the breeze rustling through the leaves overhead. Suddenly, I saw a huge snake to the right side of the path, its head held up at an angle ready to strike. My heart pounded in my chest for a millisecond and I leaped back in terror. My actions were instinctual and rapid. I took no time to analyze or think through my motivations.

However, once I had jumped back, I stopped and …

Sometimes you're just itching for a change. And many times moving to a new home, changing careers, and developing different relationships is exactly the right thing. Other times, the urge to make a change is about wiggling out of a situation that might require you to address some issues.

How can you tell the difference?

1. One indicator is whether the unwanted situation tends to recur, regardless of the environment.

For example, I repeatedly wrote curriculum, developed training, and did the t…

I'm hearing about anxiety more and more in the past couple of years, and I know it's been difficult. So I wanted to offer you some knowledge and some of my top tips to get myself back to calm.

1) Anxiety is a function of groups. It tends to run quickly through systems and is highly contagious.

Tip: Observe its movements, and when it gets to you, pay attention to your body. See how you can self-regulate with a hand on the belly and a soft breath down to the hand, instead of passing the anxiety …

Ever wonder if you've left the stovetop on? For a lot of people, it's a real question because they leave the stovetop on a couple of times a week, and then, even when they do turn it off, they worry that maybe they didn't.

If that's the way your mind works, you learn to find workarounds. For example, you can make your cup of tea in the microwave instead of boiling it in a kettle on the stove (which might sound sacrilegious if you live in Kenya or the UK).

Building empathy

Rather than feeling …

Some people believe that suffering and living in poverty is necessary to be truly spiritual. That idea is hidden or openly taught in many belief systems and philosophies.

And there's a nugget of truth - sometimes the lack of material possessions, wealth, or creature comforts does bring us back to the essence of our soul. I had a prayer partner for years who was with the sisters of charity, and her only possessions were two blue and white habits like the ones Mother Theresa would wear, a well-pa…