Tag: Relationships
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Layers of Listening
Many of us spend the majority of our days in conversations of one kind or another. This is particularly true for coaches, therapists, and other practitioners who spend their time supporting others’ development. Bringing greater mindfulness to how we approach conversations with anyone—our clients, colleagues, partners, children, friends, and others—holds the potential to make these…
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Coregulation: the Heart of Skillful Response
This article first appeared in the Mindful Leader blog in December 2020. “If you want to improve the world, start by helping people feel safer.” —Stephen Porges Can you recall a moment in your life when you felt truly supported? Perhaps it was a session with a therapist, bodyworker, coach, or teacher. Maybe it was…
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The People We Pick
How do they arrive? This year, in Brady-Bunch squares. Or, sometimes, 6 feet away on the porch. My world feels both bigger and smaller now. So few people are physically in my space. I can count the people I’ve hugged without using all the fingers on one hand. At the same time, next Friday I’ll…
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The Shift from Control to Contribution
One of the most challenging lessons I have had to learn in my spiritual journey is my relationship to control. It was a tough pill to swallow, to confront how little control I have in and over life. As human beings, we tend to seek control because we think it provides us with a sense…
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Renegotiating When Circumstances Shift
I recently got together with some friends for the first time since March. This event was a big deal for the whole group. To ensure everyone would feel comfortable, we agreed to get Covid tests and self-quarantine in the week leading up to our get-together. And yet, I still felt very wobbly about the whole…
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Sitting in Squares
I now meditate every morning in a little square, my green meditation cushions backed up against the wall under some forest photos my aunt took. I’m the first up in my house, save for the cat playing with my feet. The same friends I meditated with at work meditate, plus some new people. Now we…
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In Our Eyes
I had been staying with my mom for a month, nursing her 98-year-old body back to a relative state of health after a downturn. I am not sure what really happened prior to me getting there, but I think she had kind of thrown in the towel. For almost every moment of her life, she…
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Self-Leadership in Unprecedented Times
In the last months, our worlds as we knew them have shifted and changed, and we are all making sense in our own way. To quote a friend: “The challenge is to find a balance between being pollyanna-ish and alarmist”. As I participate in conversations with different groups – coaching community, executives, leaders, global and…
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Integrating What Is Broken in Us
We are all broken. In some circles, this is a radical thing to say (“Hey, some of us are doing just fine, thank you!”); for others, it’s a downer (“That’s a pretty negative view of people”). But for me, this is an uplifting truth and a fundamental tenant for coaching. For most of my youth,…
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I Love You More Than You Can Know
My grandfather had chaired an English department for many years and had watched me attend his alma mater for my first graduate degree. When I came home, he would sit back in his recliner, tapping his fingers on the arm. He would quote a line or two from Shakespeare or talk about how mad he…
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Letting Our Differences Have Their Way With Us
In my experience, any time we engage in a conversation about our differences with an intention to prove the other side wrong, we’re heading for a dead end. When we take a right-wrong stance to any conversation about difference — whether it’s about race or gender, politics or religion — it reveals that we’re more…
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Find Your People
This piece originally appeared in the Huffington Post in December 2014. Holiday time is family time. But what exactly do we mean by family? So many people live three time zones – or an ocean – away from their parents and siblings, turning travel “home” into a costly or time-sucking ordeal. Then there are the…
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Transparency
I’m a little sad most of the time and I’m not up to much of anything. Great conversation starter, huh? But if I’m honest, that’s my in-the-moment answer to the question of how am I doing these days, and what am I up to. It’s winter, it’s dark, my body wants to hibernate, I’m tired…
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London Calling
Justin Wise, NVW faculty member and founder of thirdspace coaching, was instrumental in establishing the instruction of our coaching methodology in London in 2010. Upon the graduation of our most recent cohort of students, we asked Justin about his experience leading the course. Q: Having just completed this most recent class’s certification, what are your…
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Nothing to do but “be with”
Each year in late November, around Thanksgiving, I begin a cycle of reflection. As the daylight hours become shorter and dark hours grow longer, it feels like time begins to slow down. Turning inward, I reflect on how life is turning out for me: What is the quality of life that I am experiencing? What…
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Why it works or doesn’t
These days I’m thinking that coaching has three parts. The first is the topic/issue/breakdown that the client brings us. These come in to us in varying degrees of size and clarity—from “my boss says I’m too pushy” to “I’m wondering what I should do with my life”—and inevitably shift, at least a bit, during the…
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Knowing Yourself
It’s a funny thing that—even in a class that lasts for a full year—so much gets unsaid, so much depth is left unexplored, so many stories go unrelated. In this forum though there are no such limitations, so let’s see what there is to explore. What’s the best way to get to know yourself? The…