Feedback from this coaching client made me sit up. Her description of what we did together as a team gives you an idea of how to relax, get on with the work and enjoy your success.
I was an emotional mess when I first met Brigitte Nix and after a couple of months I became coachable.
The important thing to realise here is that the sooner you are prepared to be honest with yourself, you can be honest in your times with Brigitte and really make progress both emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Coaching is about dealing with the here and now and also looking forward – never back.
Brigitte taught me many techniques and strategies for coping with my personal situations and the organic nature of them really propelled me out of victim mode into becoming a much more secure person with healthier emotional boundaries and a sense of self worth that I learned I had lost along the way.
As a 50+ yr old woman I thought I had it all sussed – but then life throws you all kinds of unexpected challenges and Brigitte helped me overcome those challenges with the strategies and techniques but more importantly they became life transferable skills because I still use them when something new decides to chuck itself at me out of the blue.
Here are a few that I learned and I still apply them today:
I discovered that I could be triggered very easily and over-react. By learning a particular technique which Brigitte encouraged me to repeat over and over again, I found that I could respond rather than react. The application of the technique is now something that is automatic in me whenever I feel triggered and consequently whilst the opportunity for being triggered may persist, my ability to respond and quickly quash the feeling and impact of the triggering is so powerful that I welcome being triggered because I can deal with it.
I also learned that I needed to find balance in my thinking – it wasn’t about technical jargon like left or right brain thinking. Brigitte realised how I functioned (visualiser) and helped me see possibilities through the use of visualising techniques and relating them to my feelings. Over a few sessions, I began to create a balance which meant I could accept the bad images and feelings I had and overcome them with really simple techniques.
This is where I began to realise how Brigitte “ understood” me. You see when you talk to yourself you don’t always listen to yourself and so all you do is talk out loud and little is achieved in your thinking. It’s when you listen to yourself you begin to understand who, what and why you are. Brigitte is that listening post; the active listening means that she can help you hear your own words through gentle questioning and other very simple approaches to help your own self talk move and develop into a more holistic, balanced and confident thinker/speaker/doer.
A third way that Brigitte helped was to use my profession and its vocabulary to focus on my needs and ability to make decisions about my life. I was a drama teacher and directed productions (I still do this when I can) I was struggling with my professional and personal life. I couldn’t see a way out of the dilemma I believed I was in. Brigitte homed in on my directing skills with the very simple question; If you could direct your life and if the people involved were props or actors how would you direct the production before you?
The penny dropped and suddenly I found I could re-arrange the stage of my life in so many different ways. Being a visualiser, thinking in colour and seeing images, I could make the difficult aspects of my life including people I knew became props to be moved on and off the stage to suit me. The “actors” were given leading roles or walk one extras to suit me. I put myself into this visual picture and Brigitte skilfully asked questions to challenge my thoughts which then began to consolidate more positively than I could have imagined.
The beauty of this is that none of this technique or strategy was “arranged”. It arose organically. I happened to mention that one of the people who was causing me great grief reminded me of the Statue of the Commendatore in the opera Don Giovanni. I felt threatened and intimidated and the music in my head was overpowering. Brigitte listened to me and from that she encouraged me to begin to restage the “opera of my life”.
It worked and still does. How do I know that? I contacted Brigitte today in fact and as our conversation developed with her listening so carefully and actively, I realised by myself that I was about to start directing the next new piece in my life. I had to come out of the “Green Room” stop being a performer in my own drama and become the stage manager and director of the next act.
Tonight I feel a new sense of purpose – not the I’m going to overcome the world kind of purpose but a sense of moving forward.
The beauty of working with Brigitte is that
There is no judgement, only encouragement.
There is no right answer – just the ones that work to help you.
There is no shame in seeking help, advice, guidance – how else can you grow?
There is joy to be had in finding who, what and why you are and coaching techniques often help an immediate need but most importantly they are there throughout to help your future needs in ways that you least expect.