I’ve avoided this relationship coaching business of mine for several months now. At least I avoided (read had an allergic reaction to) any effort to “grow” it that required self-revelatory writing or (wince) posting on social media. And I got behind on invoicing (not a big job right now) and tracking expenses to the point that I broke my YNAB Biz Budget irreparably. I did keep a toe in the visibility puddle by consistently checking and responding to leads on Noomii. And - the most important thread to hold onto - I showed up real for my coaching and mediation clients.
Granted those months were very full. Travel, family happenings, and navigating a new relationship and its impact on existing ones took me outside my bandwidth to the extent that I had to catch up with myself at the end of the year. Still, even after catching up and slowing down, the absence of the grand "biggification" plan I felt I was supposed to have, along with the ironic coexisting resistance to any such plan, kept me stuck. Paralyzed even.
Oliver Burkeman’s blog offered a glimmer of release and movement, not so new (I’ve been following him for a while) but approachably simple and un-overwhelming. And it looked like this. I just scheduled three work sessions on FocusMate with very immediate tasks for each and no idea what might come after: reset my broken business budget, listen to the rest of George Kao’s Gentle Summit recordings, and write. Write anything. Just write. Show up. Trust the process. Trust consistent action, even if it’s incremental.
Turns out the budget reset took a session and a half, and I couldn’t immediately get my hands on the thumb drive with the videos on it, but I showed up in those sessions and did stuff. And it felt soooooo good! Gentle flowy glowy de-stuckification. Thank you Havi Brooks for your oh-so-satisfying word inventions (biggification, de-stuckification) and your New Year Experiments post that beautifully reaffirmed me in this incremental process of mine (how did The Fluent Self drop off my radar for so long?!). Thank you Oliver. And thank you Cindy, my Wonder Twin, for sharing exactly the posts I need and rocking the consistently incremental path. Wonder Twin Turtle power! And thank you friends (chosen and familial) who have supported me in this eccentric turtle process of mine, even when - especially when - it didn’t make much sense to you. Thank you for seeing me. So much gratitude.