Too weird for coaching?

I coach on work stuff. How to improve your work relationships. How to overachieve without burning out. How to ask for that promotion or flexi schedule or whatever it is that you want. How to stand up to your inner critic when she’s insisting you suck and that every bad thing in the world that’s ever happened is actually your fault somehow. 

I love coaching on all that stuff. I love helping y’all love your work and cultivate happy careers. 

But I also want you to know: I coach on ALL KINDS of other stuff, too. How to handle your mom when every single word she says makes your eye twitch a little. How to recover when the person you’d been dating stops returning your texts. How to end a workday without opening a bottle of wine. 

We cultivate a happy career in many ways, not just at our jobs. We learn to love our work not just by loving it, but also by managing all our thoughts and feelings about everything that’s NOT work. 

And coaching on personal stuff is really beneficial for our work lives, too. Sometimes, getting coached on an eating habit will also help your brain see a work project differently. Or getting coached about your partner will reveal something that totally changes how you show up in work relationships. Or seeing how your self critical thoughts are backfiring when it comes to laundry and house cleaning can really help you shift your self talk at work, too.

The self we take to work isn’t separate from the self we are outside of it. These parts of us may show up differently sometimes, but our relationship to ourselves is always hugely impactful in every area of our lives, and it’s worth working on in as many ways as we want to. 

And coaching is an amazing place to do this work, because I understand that coaching in any area can be useful to your work goals, even if the connection isn’t obvious at the outset. 

That’s why I coach my clients on everything they bring me. There is nothing too personal. There is nothing too weird. There is NOTHING I would judge them for. Yes, sometimes I might mention that another professional might be useful for certain things, because I don’t have expertise in every area. But I will certainly never, ever judge my clients for what they bring me.

And as you already know, that is rare in life. It’s so rare that we can just unpack our minds and let all our stuff come out and just be there. Without trying to spin it or laugh it off or say, oh but really it’s no big deal. Sometimes, it *is* a big deal to us, and we want to talk about it with someone who doesn’t need us to be anything but what we are in that moment. 

When I get new clients, it can take them a while to realize that it’s really ok to bring whatever they have. That we’ll work on anything. 

And even if you never sign up for coaching, this is something that can be useful for you. So often, my clients try to solve their problems by judging themselves. But that doesn’t work. Instead, it just makes us feel guilty and ashamed. But guilt and shame don’t create productive results. Instead, then tend to lead to us trying to escape our feelings with things like Netflix and a homemade whiskey cocktail. 

However, when we can look at our own lives without judgment, or even just with less of it, it’s a lot easier to move forward. To find a new way of seeing things. To find a solution we can actually do. So, whether you ever sign up for coaching or not, take a little test drive of judging yourself less. I think you’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish from that headspace. 

And if you need extra help weeding that judgement out, I got you. You can find me here with a new blog each week (or sign up for my list and get the goods delivered directly to your inbox). And! Pretty soon I’ll also be launching a podcast, so I’ll have lots of fun episodes just for you, teaching you how to love your work and judge yourself less (or not at all!). 

Stay tuned for more info on the podcast! So excited to share it with y’all.