LET’S START WITH A LITTLE PRESENCE PRACTICE
It all begins where you are.
To arrive at a destination, we always need to know where we are standing.
Where are you now?
Take a moment.
Let sound reach your ears.
Notice the colours that you see.
Notice smells and taste.
Feel your feet on the ground.
Let go of tension in your belly.
Let your jaw drop.
Soften the muscles of your face.
Rest in this moment.
Pay attention to the amazing miracle of your breath.
In- Out
In-Out
What is the rhythm of your breath?
Welcome!
You are here!
A compass helps you find direction in the unknown. What I propose is a way to think about directions we take when engaging in a coaching process. Instead of north, south, east, and west, this compass points to five essential movements that are critical in personal development and conscious growth.
Wake Up – Shake Up – Clean Up – Grow Up – Show Up
Together, these movements guide your journey of becoming.
Wake Up
Ask yourself:
What drives me?
What are the “automatic” ways I show up?
How do these patterns serve me or limit me?
What are my strengths? my longings?
How do I impact the people and things I am in relationship with?
What is calling me?
Waking up is about opening your eyes to the reality of who you are being and what you are creating in your life and in the world. As when you open your eyes to the morning light filling a room, waking up invites awareness that reveals both shadows and light. Brining awareness to how you currently relate to yourself, others and life is in itself a healing process when held with compassion and curiosity.
Sometimes, as you are opening your eyes to the new dawn, you might have the need to look back at the night before with it’s thoughts and dreams.
In coaching too you might need to shift our focus from the present and look back to what has brought you here: the conditioning that was formed in your childhood or the influences of your story, your culture, your circumstances. So that you can welcome a new understanding of what is yours by choice and what has become your identity without your choosing.
Make room for silence so you may listen for the wake-up calls.
Shake Up
What happens when you shake, dance, or jump?
What happens when you shake up the status quo?
How do your emotions move you?
The butterfly must shake its wings free of the cocoon before it can fly. Shaking up means disrupting what has become fixed:
• Shaking your thoughts by questioning old beliefs
• Shaking your body by exploring new movement and embodiment
• Shaking your emotions by bringing your attention to them without need fixing or fleeing
• Shaking your routine by trying new ways and allowing failure to be part of the experience
Shaking up is daring to enter the creative mess in our lives and discovering the gifts hidden there.
Clean Up
What needs cleaning in your life?
What must you take responsibility for—and what is not yours to carry?
If shaking up is permission to be in the mess, cleaning up is taking responsibility and coming clean. This can mean tending to wounds by deepening your relationship with them , clearing space by letting go of patterns that once served you but now hold you back or creating structure and order in your priorities and day to day life.
Just as a gardener clears weeds to make space for growth, you may need to make space for the new so you can better tend to your inner and outer world: mind, body, emotions, and relationships.
Grow Up
What choices are you making?
What must you learn—or unlearn?
To grow up is to claim and own agency. As adults, we can choose in ways we couldn’t as children. Growing in a healthy way expands our comfort zone, there is more we can be, more we can do, a greater sense of self as well as greater choice in how we relate to others, to ourselves, to the planet and to life.
The process might require going through “growing pains” of all kinds as we face what we would have preferred not to see, experience the ebb and flow of failure and success or grieve as we let go of the old ways to embrace the new.
Allowing growth in a healthy way means creating space to cultivate safety and courage by bringing compassion and warmth as we would to a growing child.
Show Up
Finally, how do you show up?
For yourself?
For your relationships?
For your community?
For the planet?
How do your actions align with what is truly important to you?
Showing up means embodying your values and vision. It means to courageously live as an active co-creator of your reality, navigating and moving through circumstances and embracing both freedom and responsibility for your impact.
The Invitation
When I work with clients, I attend to what is present and what feels stuck but even more to what is emerging: the subtle movements of transformation unfolding moment by moment.
So, where are you now?
What is moving inside you?
Whatever your answer, I hope it includes presence and a spark of excitement for the journey ahead.
✨ Are you ready to use your compass and begin the journey?
