Self Leadership Coaching

Do you remember the class in school where we were taught how to manage all our thoughts, emotions, feelings & moods, and all the stuff going on in our inner worlds?

Me either! So here’s a short intro.

We all have an Inner World made up of many parts of ourselves. Each part is a version of ourselves with different capacities, strengths, preferences, beliefs, thoughts, emotions, memories, moods and ways of being in the world.

There are no bad parts but quite often, in an effort to protect ourselves, our parts can be in conflict and seem to hold us back from being who we really are – our Authentic Self (just Self for short).

The inner conflicts between parts, obscure or eclipse the Self, and result in a lot of painful patterns and problems in our lives – both within us – mentally, emotionally and physically, and within our relationships with others.

It’s not about you leading yourself. It’s about your True Self lovingly & courageously leading your inner team of protective parts.

About Self – some people are comfortable thinking of it as our natural self, spiritual essence, our core, our essential nature, our soul, or our life force.

Too fluffy, spiritual or woo-woo? Others are more comfortable thinking about it simply as who you are naturally, when you’re feeling safe, free, whole and open-hearted. When you’re not in survival mode or defensively reacting under threat and stress – but who you can be when you feel relaxed, safe and free within.

If you know a bit about the Polyvagal Theory, I’m talking about being in the Social Engagement System (Safe & Social Mode) of our Autonomic Nervous System.

The thing is, many of us don’t live from Self much of the time. Some of us rarely ever (and some perhaps never) live from that place of authentic wholeness and safety within themselves. And that, is at the heart of so many of our pains and problems in life – the disconnect and divide from Self – and who we become instead – the strategies and reactions we unconsciously employ to try to get things right, be a good person, be who we think we need to be to feel OK in this world.

Without connection to Self, we experience:

• A lack of confidence and trust in ourselves
• A lack of clarity & certainty
• A lack of authenticity, meaning and purpose
• A lack of resilience and wellbeing
• A lack of faith and belief in who we really are
• A lack of joy, spontaneity, excitement and enthusiasm

What’s even deeper than these experiences are burdensome beliefs that:

• we aren’t enough as we are
• we aren’t good enough
• we won’t ever have enough
• we don’t belong and won’t be accepted and loved enough
• we aren’t worth enough or don’t matter enough

What does it feel like to live from Self?

Living from Self, or being Self-Connected or Self-Led, means we live from the core of our being – more from our loving hearts instead of from our heads and our egos. And when we’re in Self, usually we’re experiencing a combination of these qualities and capacities in varying amounts – so not necessarily all of them all of the time (but you might in a peak experience or flow state):

• Compassion (to our whole selves and to others)
• Connectedness (with our whole selves, others and all life)
• Calm (within & a calming presence to others)
• Clarity (of mind & the vision for our lives)
• Confidence (inherent trust & belief in ourselves)
• Courage (to face our fears, overcome resistance and do what matters)
• Curiosity (open-minded interest, enthusiasm & a drive to know & experience)
• Creativity (whole brain intuitive thinking & resourcefulness, and the desire to create, build, expand)
• Presence (being here now, aware, mindful, in flow, non-reactive or striving)
• Playfulness (fun, free, energized, joyful)
• Patience (accepting, trusting, self regulating)
• Perspective (ability to shift internal states & ways of perceiving & knowing)
• Persistence (faithful determination and drive)

Take a longer look at the list above and try to imagine what it would be like to live more of the time embodying these capacities and qualities. What it would be like to feel these ways in relationships? To be like this as a parent? As a leader?

As we work together, we’ll get to know them as the 8 Cs and 5 Ps. They are not All or Nothing qualities and capacities. They are more like continuums and we can learn to turn the dials up towards more and more Self, when we do the inner work involved.

A Trauma-Informed Coaching Approach

Self is a Healing, Integrative Force Within

The root of the word Healing is to make whole – as is the meaning of Integrate. I bring this up because I want to share how we become divided, and then I’ll get into the Self Leadership processes you can learn to reconnect, which promote wholeness and wellbeing.

The reason or cause for the disconnect and divide is in our PAST (Pain – Adversity – Stress/Suffering – Trauma). In times of great fear, stress, overwhelm, helplessness and/or hopelessness, parts of us got wounded and other parts developed strategies (ways of thinking, feeling and being) to cope and survive. To try to ensure something like that will never happen again.

These parts cling to these strategies very tightly, even years after the initial pain/adversity/stress/trauma has ended and it becomes ingrained in our personality and the way we show up in the world.

Instead of being who we really are, we behave in ways to avoid what we don’t want to happen but most of it is unconscious.

We often get confused, thinking these parts or patterns are just who we are. The thing is, these patterns keep us locked in and prevent our Authentic Self from leading us lovingly, freely and confidently through life.

Parts are a natural feature of the human psyche. That is, we are born with the potential for many ways of being who we are, many sub-personalities or sub-selves (simply known as parts). Each is a version of you but not the full and whole you.

Just think about it – there’s a you who shows up to work and is a fully functional adult, and a you who gets on the floor and plays with your kids or your pets. You not only act differently, you are different.

Think about times you were in deep conflict within yourself – a part of you wanted to do something and another part wouldn’t let you.

Think about the word ambivalence – when you have mixed feelings about something – you feel both ways at the same time.

Think about situations where you wanted to raise an issue you had with someone but you had to confront them, and as soon as you started speaking, another part took over and said something completely benign or you just forgot what you wanted to say.

Parts are not a problem – in fact, we should try to express more parts of ourselves more often. We’d feel more whole, more free, and more fully alive.

Problems come when a part that took on a role or job  in our system or psyche to protect ourselves long ago, to keep getting our needs met, to fit in, to be accepted and to get by and now that role or program prevents us from being who we are today and expressing ourselves freely. Many of these roles began when we were kids. And once parts take on such a protective role, they have a hard time letting go of them.

To get a sense of the kinds of roles these parts take on, below is a list of some highly common ones – see if any feel familiar to you just by name alone:

• Inner Critic
• Perfectionist
• Procrastinator
• People-Pleaser
• Impostor
• Nice Guy/Gal
• Controller
• Avoider
• Anxious
• Helper/Caretaker
• Clown/Joker
• Rebel
• Fun-Blocker
• Dream-Crusher
• Depressed
• Bully
• Driver/Pusher
• Binge-er
• Numb-er
• Escapist
• Indulger
• One of my favorite names I’ve given to one of my parts:
  Mr. Freez-n-Pleaz

These Parts Are Not Your Enemies

There are some coaching approaches out there that make these parts out to be some kind of internal pathological enemies that need to be conquered, tamed, silenced or eliminated.

It is true, that some of our parts hold onto their roles too tightly, and though they once protected us at a time when we needed it to survive and belong, they now cause us a lot of suffering. That said, I believe in a much more appreciative, compassionate, and collaborative approach to working with our problematic parts. In other words, a safe and loving approach.

We can’t heal and positively transform by fearing and hating ourselves even more.

One of the main therapeutic frameworks informing this work is Internal Family Systems (IFS) – you can read more about it and learn more about our internal dynamics – here: What is Self Leadership: Loving & Leading Our Selves/Parts.

I could have created a separate coaching service page for each one of those types of Problematic Parts, so you could feel this type of coaching would be highly relevant to your specific issues, wants and needs – but – the actual process would be the same, yielding life-changing results. In fact, I do have one page dedicated to The Inner Critic, because it’s an extremely common part, especially with high achievers, that causes a lot of stress and secret suffering for so many people.

I wanted to put them all under one roof here, so to speak, so it would be clear that reconnecting to the Authentic Self and learning to become the loving, compassionate, wise, strong, courageous leader within is the answer and pathway to greater inner peace, ease, confidence, freedom, resilience and wellbeing.

Manage Your Inner World Better and Build Trust in Your Self
So you can Live & Lead with Greater Presence, Wisdom, Love & Purpose

If you’ve been into Personal Development or even Therapy before, you’ve surely learned about limiting beliefs, mindsets and attitudes, and how they put filters on how we perceive and experience the world. Many methods try to get you to change or release those beliefs from the top down – solely by trying to change how you think. That can help sometimes and indeed is worth learning but it rarely goes deep enough – into our emotional brains and our bodies to make a lasting difference.

By leveraging the heart and tapping into our own source of love, care and compassion for ourselves, we can relate to ourselves in new ways to release and replace those limiting beliefs and patterns.

Through our hearts we can access the Self, and it is the Self that we (our system of parts) build trust in. Through a series of processes that I will share with you, this helps parts to relinquish their rigid roles (beliefs & burdens), and frees them to reclaim their own potentialities and gifts within us.

They are no longer divided and pitted against each other. They may (they likely will) still cause resistance and even take over sometimes but you will have an inner process – a way of speaking to parts of yourself with compassion, curiosity, and acceptance so as to help them step back and let the Self take the wheel, internally and externally.

When they see what we can do, as the now grown, wise, confident, free being that we are, and they see the results we get when we are in Self, the impact we make, the meaning we create and the fulfillment we experience, they will relax their protective hold and we (our whole system) will feel a surge of wellbeing and positivity.

Because the Disconnect & Divide from Self is so insidious and devastating – and leads so many of us to self-devaluation and self-sabotage, which cause even more damage within us and in our lives, what this coaching approach promises is for you to learn and become very much more SELF-ish or SELF-FULL:

• Self aware
• Self understanding
• Self accepting
• Self compassionate
• Self connected
• Self appreciative
• Self confident
• Self loving
• Self leading

Self Leadership Coaching Begins with Inner Leadership Resilience Training

The main purpose of our work is to help you not only become more of who you really are – your Authentic Self – but more connected to it and living from it in the outer world.

I believe this is the best way – the only real way for you to create and live an authentic, rich, healthy, joyful & meaningful life. Being who you really are!

Self Leadership Coaching begins with The Resilience Fundamentals Training to teach you the important inner leadership skills of:

• Awareness, Presence & Mindfulness,
• Heart-Centered Self Regulation,
• Emotional Processing,
• Thought Management, and
• the Priming of Positive Emotions.

This will be a brief introduction to tools and practices of managing your inner world. Ideally, you will continue to develop your own inner leadership practices that you use daily.

These skills and tools help you manage your thoughts, emotions and energy in healthier ways. They help you build the muscles of resilience – the ability to notice when you’re not in your best self and have you come back to your heart, back to who you really are once you’ve been triggered, stressed, scared or struggling.

Starting with this training also helps us as coaching partners begin to build trust in one another, which is vital to our work, and will be very important to some of your parts (as well as mine).

We can then begin the compassionate, appreciative approach of Whole Life Coaching for Self Leadership.

Learn to Turn the Dials of Experience, Moment to Moment

In Self Leadership Coaching we’ll be working on creating the life you’re meant to live.

Here are the main pillars of our work:

• Establishing the meaningful direction you want to move towards – the future state that you want (the reason why you’re coming to coaching)
• Understanding your Essential Needs – what they are and how you’ve been meeting them and learning more effective and life-enhancing ways of fulfilling them (Safety, Security, Belonging, Love, Self Worth, Authenticity, Purpose, Contribution, etc.)
• Clarifying and connecting to your Core Values to prioritize and to take a stand for what really matters to you so you can guide your life, long term and day-to-day more effectively and meaningfully
• Forming a clear vision of the kind of person you’d be if you were authentically free – and the impact and difference you want to make in the world – your purpose.
• Identifying the strengths of character and virtues that bring out the best in you, that light up your parts and help you be more of you in life – engaged, committed and in flow
• Understanding and facing your fears, and practicing acceptance and compassion for yourself
• Uncovering and resolving blindspots, limiting beliefs, maladaptive patterns, and inner conflicts caused by our competing protective parts, while getting to know the wounded parts they’re protecting and learning to help them feel safer with your Self taking the lead more of the time
• Supporting you in creating meaningful goals that stretch you and help you grow by taking effective courageous values-driven actions forward and working with the resistance and interference of the relevant part, helping you become more Self-led over time
  
• Working together till you feel you’re ready to bring our first journey to a close – we can always pick up again down the road when you’re ready for more