Coaching is Like Gardening
"A garden in the early stage is not a pleasant or compelling
place: it's a lot of arduous, messy, noisome work -- digging up
the hard ground, putting in the fertilizer, along with the seeds
and seedlings. So with beginning a story or novel." --Ted
Solotaroff
That's like the beginning of coaching, too.
ARDUOUS WORK
This is when the client starts working on getting rid of
tolerations. These are things we put up with that need to go --
a messy car, torn wallpaper, a negative 'friend,' a bad job, an
impossible marriage.
It's typical to have a year's worth of work. It looks awesome at
first, but just getting the first things off the list gives a
lot of momentum.
HARD GROUND
This is getting rid of obstacles. Sometimes they're
self-imposed, like pessimism, or low self-esteem. Or maybe the
inability to generate options, or financial obstacles.
For one of my clients, Jen, it was getting over her obsession
about her ex-husband. "You told me that was the obstacle," she
said. "You can't believe the energy it freed up once I got over
him."
SEEDS
These are new plans and goals. Here are some of the goals my
clients have had recently: