Life Coaching

As much as I don’t want to, sometimes you just have to do HARD THINGS. Uncomfortable things, painful things, things you don’t feel capable of, fearful things.

Why do we have to do them, and when should we not do them?

I’m doing a lot of them recently, and have been doing so this year. And yet, there are also things that I’m deciding not to do, which perhaps I probably “should” do, that if I did them, would also be good for me: grow me, connect me, lead to some kind of  positive outcome. So, why do we need to stretch ourselves to do the hard things, when we really don’t want to, and when is it OK to just not do them, and not be in the realm of just making excuses for ourselves?  It’s a tricky line to walk.

When the value-based reason/s for doing it, the higher purpose, outweighs the fear and/or pain of doing it: when the “work” is more important than the fear. If you don’t know and understand the bones of this equation for yourself, then it will lead to a lot of indecision and angst as you try and decide whether to do something that feels hard or just get out of it. It’s easy to make excuses for the hard things, because most of your Being will not want to do them and your unconscious mind will be a genius at coming up with legitimate reasons not to. If we never see past his dynamic and rise above it, we stay stuck. If we stay stuck and don’t do things to stretch and grow, we don’t evolve. This goes against your brain’s natural wiring, which wants to goal set and achieve, and one might say it also goes against your spiritual wiring, of the basic need to expand, as the physical universe is designed to always be expanding. Going counter to this is going counter to our true nature. It doesn’t mean you have to be stretching and evolving and growing ALL THE TIME – times of just cruising and enjoying your life with no real stretch are necessary! But if we don’t consciously practise the hard thing, when life throws a situation at us that absolutely REQUIRES us to swim in the deep end, then those times can be make or break. In other words, new or challenging situations will happen that require us to respond differently and get though them (think: having a baby; the death of a loved one and learning to live without them; a new job that throws you in the deep end). In other words, as well as the growth, thriving and confidence that’s available to us by having these experiences, there’s also the resilience to be built, which absolutely serves us by then being available to us when we really need it: If we’ve done hard things before, we will be able to do them again. 

 

 “Nothing in this world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty.”

– Theodore Roosevelt 

“If you’re willing to do only what’s easy, life will be hard. But if you’re willing to do what’s hard, life will be easy”

– T. Harv Eker 

There’s a big difference between personal values and actual capability: a difference between the confines of trauma and learned helplessness, and your intentions. For example, there are some things you’re simply not capable of doing: the example that spiritual leader Eckhart Tolle gives, is that he’ll never be a professional basketball player, because he’s too old and simply not tall enough! However if you get so much JOY out of playing basketball, then you could do it. However, if you’re psychologically limited because you’re sitting in unresolved trauma, this can lead to something called “learned helplessness”. It means that you’re very CAPABLE of doing certain things, but you don’t BELIEVE you can do them, even simple things, which then causes you to do very little, and therefore not get any real-time and accurate feedback about your capabilities. Obviously, this leads to an extreme lack of confidence, and the cycle keeps you stuck. 

However, you can have INTENTIONS. And set very small and realistic goals for stretching yourself, relatively speaking.

Some examples from my own personal life at the moment. In February this year (2024) I attended a writer’s retreat weekend for the first time. Having not been to one before I had no idea what to expect. However, that’s not what made this situation special. The day before we were due to go I had a bit of a cataclysmic bomb dropped on me. I won’t go into detail, but it was huge and I didn’t sleep much that night. With the majority of the fibres of my being – not all fibres of my being – it became obvious to me) all I wanted to do on the Friday evening was curl up in bed and feel sorry for myself. In fact, I could have even just skipped the Friday introductory evening and attended the weekend anyway. Yet, those few fibres of my being felt pulled to go. I let my friend and colleague know I was in a bit of a state and she was feeling nervous and sleep deprived also for different reasons, and we agreed to look after each other. The evening ended up being profound and set the course of direction for me for the weekend. In fact, the weekend itself was profound and probably changed my life. Some part of me knew that the value outweighed the fear/pain.

I’m currently seeing my own therapist, and he had a different model for working than what I’ve been trained in and become used to. It’s not comfortable for me, and although I’ve engaged in short periods of it in the past to get through acute stress (post-natal anxiety for example) I’ve always found reasons to avoid it. In fact, I’d be OK if I wasn’t doing it now. Yet, what we are working on, and how we are doing it, I know is 100% important for me to do, and it’s something I’ve learned I can’t do in any other manner. I try and think of ways of getting out of it every time, believe me! Yet: it’s known to me that the value of the work outweighs the discomfort of it. 

I’ve recently committed to a six month programme with a business strategist. It’s not cheap, it’s a huge commitment and the doubts have been FLYING. There’s a million reasons not to do this! And there’s a lot of excuses flying around too. Again, I’m fine without it, there’s not a huge problem to solve. Yet, I also know, in a part of me, that there are things I want to do, messages I need to get out, projects I care about, people to reach, and that being able to “know” how to do all this alone is something I’ve realised is a fallacy. I’ve been in business for 18 years and most of that I’ve worked out by myself. It’s time to partner up and scale up! Again: the value of this outweighs the fears and doubts. It’s going to require me to trust and dig deep and I might well doubt it the whole way through, and yet my eye is on the prize which I know will be worth it. 

When not to do it, then? Quite simply this requires you to know what’s important to you. Without this, your criteria will be wobbly. This is a reason to get clearer on your values. Do you know what they – actually – are? Do you want to? 

With love,

Charlotte.

 

Ok, so here’s the dilemma. 

 

This has come up recently with a few clients and also for myself personally in my couple’s work.

 

We are all imperfect people (yes, all) and we all have wounds to heal. We all have painful places within us as a result from the past, which can feel unbearable when they get triggered by something in the present day. We would have developed coping strategies in our young brains which would have been the best that our brains could’ve come up with at the time. Now that we’re in adulthood, we recognise that these aren’t helpful and can also be somewhat triggering to the people that we love and live with – withdrawal, distancing, distraction, numbing with various addictions, dismissing, shutting down, anger, aggression, and so on. We all experience these to some degree, differences being that we just live with them and the impact of them, or we have the courage to heal ourselves (now, will in the future, or have done in the past).

 

Well, let’s say that your partner (with their personal wounds, painful places and coping strategies) conducts a behaviour that’s not cool for you, and it triggers you. Let’s say they make big financial decisions without talking with you first, and these decisions affect you, and this is just not an OK behaviour (please note this is not a personal example, just an example).

 

Let’s say that this triggers you into one of your painful places that isn’t healed yet – a sense of exclusion and not feeling important. You get angry and aggressive (coping) and your partner shuts down and withdraws (coping). You’re aware that you’re being triggered “disproportionately” – at 110% charge rather than perhaps a 10-20% charge, which would be more relative to the situation at hand.

 

Let’s say you’re a self-aware person and it comes up in a session 1:1 with your therapist. You want to heal yourself. Your sense of exclusion and subsequent anger is not something you like happening, and you know it’s causing problems, and you want to heal and change.

 

Let’s say you successfully heal the wound and no longer have the painful place, or the reactivity you once had as your coping strategy. Your partner again, makes a financial decision that affects you without consulting you. This is still reality, regardless of your own personal evolution.

 

What happens now?

 

Now that you’ve healed and the trigger is no longer causing a disproportionate reaction, then that’s OK, we can just leave it? 

 

Does this mean your partner is now off the hook? They don’t need to change?

 

Now you can be Zen and let things slide off you, without getting all caught up in the tangled and painful patterns of the past?

 

Maybe.

 

And – it’s much more likely that because you’ve changed your own inner world to be more balanced, that a particular behaviour is still not OK, and you recognise it as such. It has a negative impact.

 

Even if you’re only triggered at a 10% charge, it’s still not OK.

 

Just because we change ourselves, a damaging behaviour is still not OK.

 

Also – by asking our partner (or whoever) to change a damaging behaviour while not being willing to look inwards and change ourselves, is also not OK. These things interplay and they go together. Two sides of the same coin.

 

Now it’s time to understand how your own healing and changes can influence your external world, as well as your internal one.

 

Firstly, think of everything as an interchange. A flow of energy, vibes, words, verbal and non-verbal communication, conscious or unconscious signals, between us and the people around us. We are constantly influencing one another, for better or for worse, we can’t not. This may be completely under our conscious radar. By changing ourselves, we will be giving out different signals, that others will either consciously or unconsciously pick up on – vibes or blatantly obvious communication or behaviour changes – and then they react differently to us as a result. 

 

Great! Good outcome there.

 

Secondly, once we’ve changed our triggered reactions from a 110% charge to a 10% charge (for example) we can look at some other important things: 

 

BOUNDARIES and;

 

COMMUNICATION.

 

We can begin to get clear with ourselves with what’s OK and not OK in our important relationships. We can begin to communicate these in a way that protects the other person’s self-esteem and the relationship. 

 

There is interplay. These things work together. 

A thought for the day.

 

Love, Charlotte.

“Midlife is when the universe gently places her hands upon your shoulders, pulls you close, and whispers in your ear: I’m not screwing around, you’re halfway to dead, now – use all the gifts you’ve been given!”

– Dr Brene Brown

In conversation with Tim Ferris, The Tim Ferris Show, Episode 656, January 2020.

 

By the time I’ll have properly shut up shop by August 2024, it would’ve been a career spanning 18 and a half years. It’s fair to say I’ve never done any other one thing for this long! 

 

My coaching practice/business has been successful, I think. But how do you define success?

 

Indulge me – would you? – in a little trip down memory lane, a pre-emptive epilogue to this book of my career, if you will. It is the longest and most successful career I’ve had, after all. I write this in the hope that one day my daughters may be interested in this period of my life, and how they fitted into it all. Maybe they will or won’t, but I’ve a personal need to reflect and express myself anyway. 

 

When I look back at starting my business in 2006, I’m not sure if it’s with a state of wonder or cringe-worthiness. It would be easy to label myself as arrogant when I look back: I really did “take the bull by the horns” in my engagement in what might be termed (and I hate this phrase) “guerilla marketing.”  Those were the days before social media, and when “life coaching” was less of a buzz and more of an uncertain, emerging profession. My approach then would be considered old-skool now: there was no hiding behind a keyboard in 2006. My 27 year-old self physically flung herself in front of anyone and everyone who would grant me the grace of their attention, even if it were only for five minutes (think: morning teas brought to busy GP practices, attempting to give “presentations” to doctors who merely swooped in to grab a muffin (bakery-bought, not supermarket, my desire to represent my services as “high quality” was present right from the beginning). Although most were skeptical, some took a chance on me, which ultimately got paying clients through the door. The rest was the word-of-mouth dynamic – the “gold standard” of marketing – which only works if you focus on being REALLY GOOD at what you do (which I did). 

 

I started with no experience in private practice. I was, however, inspired, brazen, brave, and desperate (desperate) for income, having exhausted every cent I’d had on my NLP/coach training. I still remember the old shoes and skirt I wore to my very first session with a paying client (it’s not an ensemble I would wear now).

 

I started with no experience but with a good grounding in ethics, gained through two assistant psychologist positions I’d held in London as a young psych-grad (one I loved; one I hated). I was lucky as this set me in good stead for running a busy private practice and all the dilemmas that come with that. I ended up presenting to the members of the NZANLP on ethics in private practice a few years later (not the most popular subject, but a necessary one).

 

Within six months I was able to ditch the old shoes and skirt and celebrated letting go of my (shitty) part-time job and being able to support myself with full-time income as a coach and therapist. At only 27 years old, I was way beyond many of my peers. I designed and delivered a marketing workshop for emerging coaches and ran it for a few years.

 

Fast forward 18 months. My biggest success was coming, which turned out to be my biggest failure, too. 

 

I wrote an article about two of my lovely clients who’d respectively solved their chronic and debilitating insomnia issues in just one session with me. This was published in the mainstream women’s magazine, NEXT. I was subsequently interviewed on TV One’s Breakfast show about my methods for solving sleep problems. What followed could never have been predicted or planned for, but with the benefit of hindsight I would do things SO DIFFERENTLY….

 

Things EXPLODED: every man, woman and their dog in New Zealand, Australia (and some from Europe) wanted to solve their debilitating sleep problems too –  “just like the article”. Although this may appear to be a great result, for a 29 year old sole-practitioner with no infrastructure set up to cope with the demand, it was not. I became so pressured and stressed that I, myself, lost my own sleep (the irony has never been lost on me). The upshot of it was that I provided my colleagues around the country a shitload of business, hired myself an associate  and a PA, and never had to do any active marketing ever again, remaining true to this day.

 

The seeming marketing “success strategy” was replicated by some, never to yield the same results. I was plagerised by other, less ethical practitioners. It may have launched me into slight fame and iconic-status among the niche group that shared my career choice at the time, but left my own nervous system shot and propelled me into my first spell of burnout. (Lesson Number One….)

 

Since this watershed moment of my career, I’ve gone onto publish an eBook on Amazon, loved doing a weekly radio show on community Access Radio, and did a big Trauma Recovery Mission to Samoa  with a crew, following the 2009 earthquake and Tsunami, which got coverage on Radio New Zealand. I’ve survived two major burnouts, two successful pregnancies (and one lost one), two bouts of debilitating postnatal mental-illness, two periods of extended maternity leave. I met a man, bought a house, got married, had children and kept my career going among it all. I’ve had two major business re-brands and designed and delivered a complete online course (The Inner Critic to Inner Coach process), plus – one of my favourite things – I created a podcast! If I hadn’t been heavily pregnant and about to be on a lengthy period of maternity leave, this would have been a great joy to continue. 

 

I’ve delivered talks and workshops on all aspects of personal development, my biggest in-person audience being 100 very enthusiastic people. Back in the day, I diligently wrote one blog a week and sent a monthly newsletter, even when I was in full-time employment in government (I’ve always loved the writing). My newsletter and blog achieved readership rates way above the industry standards. I have kept my archive. 

 

I also had two years (i’m seeing  pattern of twos) working as an employee in two government organisations, during which I achieved some very cool things in Organisational Development working as a Lead Coach, including setting up in-house coaching for leaders and training and supervising a team of in-house leadership coaches. I’ve spent my last two (!) years very happily and comfortably working with some absolutely lovely 1:1 clients (whom I adore and am achieving great things with). I’ve enjoyed the balance of keeping my practice small, and fitting it in nicely around my commitments at Playcentre, raising my two children, general housewifery, and – my other passion – living a community-centred life. 

 

I’ve invested in SO MUCH professional and personal development across the years! (Did you know I’m a fully trained hypnotherapist?). More recently having trained in the best therapeutic trauma-revovery tool I’ve ever come across (and one of the best things I’ve learned to help my own children). I’ve been lucky to have learned from some very talented supervisors, one of which I had for a decade, and who still very much helps me inside my head often.

 

It’s fair to say I’ve helped thousands and thousands of people over the nearly-two decades I’ve been doing this work. (Back in the day, I saw over 25 people per week one-to-one, and more than once reached the coveted “six figure salary” that  the modern-day coaches seem to be seeking.) My practice has been like a loyal and inspiring friend, always there for me, always working well. It’s been part of my identity, and I’ve been a part of its. And by “it”, of course, I mean YOU!  You’ve served me, and I’ve served you. It’s been challenging, comforting, overwhelming, inspiring, difficult, easy, rewarding, the privilege of a lifetime!

 

And now – it’s time for a change. It’s not been a straightforward decision, but a crystal clear one nonetheless, and it’s an exciting time ahead.

 

I’ll ALWAYS be a self-development geek – I saturate myself in books and podcasts every week. I still have such a fascination with human potential and the development of mastery. I’ll  be committed to, and inspired by my existing clients right up until the end. 

 

To every single person who’s been a part of my journey, I’m grateful to you. You’ve taught me something, and I very much hope I’ve taught you something, too.

 

Peace out.

Love,

Charlotte Schuckard (nee Hinksman).

Life & Leadership Coach 2006 – 2024.

 

P.S. My website and online course will close down in March 2024. I’m seeing 1:1 clients until approximately beginning August 2024.