Yesterday I wrote a short blog offering myself as a coach for parents and young adults that are maybe struggling to navigate the transition from childhood to adulthood. I hadn’t planned to write that particular blog when I got up yesterday, I planned to write some more about career coaching and the milestones in our lives when we assess our careers. But instead I started to consider the difficulties young people and their parents face when teenagers move in to adulthood. When I reflected on this decision it was obvious why. On the 1st October 1989 I left home to start my Nurse training. Since Friday this has been praying on my mind. It has seriously affected my state of mind and had clearly influenced the decisions I was making. With that in mind I thought I would share with you my memories of those few days and try and make sense why this year of all years this event has had such an impact on me.
Clearly this took place 34 years ago so my memory of the exact events will be very patchy. However what is clear is the memory of how I felt and how Mum felt (having had many conversations about that day over the years).
I didn’t have to much to pack, my clothes, radio cassette player, my music collection, a few books and a food hamper put together by Mum. My cousin Rachel drove us to Hull. Mum was in the front seat next to Rachel and I was on the backseat with my belongings, and a list of directions to get to Hull. I had written the directions from a road atlas. I remember being more tense about getting the directions right than leaving home as we drove along the M56 towards Manchester. As it turned out I could have done with being more alert to my surroundings, as we missed the turning on to the M6 North and ended up in Manchester. After being lost in Manchester for about an hour we eventually got on to the M62 straight to Hull. I remember nothing of the rest of the journey until we were on Clive Sullivan Way (A63), which is the main dual carriageway into Hull. I remember seeing the Humber Bridge and my nerves starting to take hold. Then we turned on to Rawlings Way and Hull Royal Infirmary came into view, where I would be living, working and learning. My stomach started doing somersaults. Once we arrived I was given my keys and room number (Room 914). I was on the 9th floor. Opening the door of my room was a big shock for me and Mum. The room seemed tiny and so basic. I had a sink a wardrobe a table a chair and a bed. the kitchen was down the corridor as was the shared bathroom. Everything seemed so dated and soulless. I really wanted to go home, but I knew that was not an option so I kept my thoughts to myself. Before Mum and Rachel left we walked into Hull City Centre and had Sunday lunch in Burger King.
When I was saying goodbye to Mum I tried my hardest not to cry, I could see Mum was trying her hardest not to upset me and cry. I will never forget that hug we gave each other in the carpark outside the staff residence at HRI. Neither of us wanted to let go. Mum told me years later that she cried for the whole journey home. She said it felt like having having her arm cut off. When they had gone I bumped in to a few other people on my course, I think it was Cathy, Anna and Jo. We had a quick chat and agreed to meet later to go exploring. I then went straight to my room and sobbed into my bed. I wasn’t sure I was ready to be an adult.
I really struggled for the next 3 months. Every night I would cry myself to sleep. I realised I was woefully under equipped for leaving home. I had no idea how to cook, I couldn’t use a washing machine and had no idea how to iron. Thankfully despite being shy I was good at making friends and if it wasn’t for my neighbour Anita (who is sadly no longer with us), Omar, Vicky, Sam and Sonia, I think I may have not managed to get through those first few months.
As I reflect on that first year of training I started to grow into being an adult, I met my best friend Julian (we talk still every week) and made some wonderful friends and memories.
Yesterday I felt really out of sorts and was short tempered and quite tearful. Reflecting on transitions and milestones in life has made me realise that I am going through another transition in my life. Our children have grown up, Jack has moved back home. and it has been a year since Mum died. I am moving into the next chapter in my life. From a work and life perspective I have less time in front of me than I do behind me.
I have no doubt been in transition since Mum died, just like the transition I started 34 years ago today. This transition period is unsettling and uncertain, but exciting at the same time. The difference is that I don’t have a full life in front of me. If I am lucky I have another 15 years of work (that would make me 67). The choices I make workwise hold more importance as I have less time fill. It makes me realise that making value based decisions is vital to ensure the actions you take meet your needs.
If you have waved goodbye to child recently, you will recognise that hug that you never want to end. This transition is painful, the fruits of this pain are worth it. They are even sweeter if we give our children the space to make decisions that are based on what they value.
If this blog has sparked a thought and you want to explore it further please get in touch.
How we all move into adulthood is not uniform. It is not just turning 18, being able to vote or legally being able to buy alcohol. I remember Ben saying to me after his graduation at the age of 22…”that’s it now Dad, I am an adult. No more student loan and full-time education, I have to find my own way now.” He had been living away from home for 3 years by this point, but in his mind graduating from University was the turning point for him. He as he said, now had to find his own way. There are others who will see the transition to adulthood happening when they become 18 and no longer have to undertake education and get a job. For some it is leaving home. My youngest son Jack left home to go to University and now he has graduated he has come home. His transition to adulthood is very different from his older brother who never came home. Both have their challenges. Ben has complete independence and is able to make decisions both helpful and unhelpful without the well meaning interference of his parents. However the financial burden of living independently is extremely challenging at the moment. Jack has less of a financial burden living at home, his challenge however is learning to live in a house with his parents as an adult.
As a work-life balance coach I work with parents and/or young people to support the family attend to the challenges they face, and that includes when children are getting ready to become adults.
Becoming an Adult
I know legally there is a moment when we become an adult, the day of your 18th birthday. As mentioned earlier though rarely is that the day that you become an adult in your behaviours, and attitudes and beliefs. That is much more a slow burn, and often a painful angst ridden one. It starts in our early teens as we push boundaries and experiment with seemingly adult decisions. I wasn’t very rebellious as a child but I do remember sneaking a cigarette from my mum’s packet of Regal King Size , then finally graduating to buying my own, and stealing cans of Heineken at family parties with my cousins, to eventually moving on to underage drinking in pubs. It is all very exciting and makes us feel all grown up. We eventually start to push back and reject some of the rules imposed by our parents and sometimes society and we start to forge our adult identity. Essentially though we are still children and very dependant on our parents to make important decisions and sustain us. As we get older the transition becomes complicated and we all have different experiences depending on the choices we make as young people and the choices our families make. Some of us will start work at the 16 or 18 others will go onto higher education. Some of us move smoothly to adulthood, others less so. It just depends on our personality, our values and how our families operate.
What my coaching will do for your teenager
When we have finished working together they will be clear what is important to them(what their core values are) Why is this important? Being clear on what their core values are helps them make decisions and plans that are true to them and are not influenced by what they think they should do but what they truly believe is important.
They will also have a clear idea of how they view the world and what motivates them, this will give them confidence to navigate the transition to adulthood that is responsive to their personal circumstances.
My approach uses the following steps:
Connecting with who they are and the stories they use to describe themselves
Identify what they value
Understand the reality of their current circumstances
Identify what is helpful and unhelpful in what they are currently doing
Letting go of their unhelpful behaviours, thoughts and beliefs
Plan actions that meet their values
I cannot guarantee that your child will command a 6 figure salary, but I can guarantee that they will understand themselves much better and be able to confidently become an independent adult.
In summary moving into adulthood is rarely straightforward and the same for everyone. We all experience it in different ways. My values based approach to coaching young adults allows them to understand what makes them tick, and what they value. This insight gives them the tools to navigate this transition in a way that meets their needs.
If you or your child would like to know more please get in touch either by email (matt@mattycoach71.com) or direct message me through the social media platform that you used to access this blog.
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Creating and managing personal boundaries while navigating the conflicting demands of work and family life is a common challenge faced by many of us. Balancing these two crucial aspects of life can be stressful, but with the right strategies and mindset, it is possible to find harmony.
The challenge is real and messy
We have to face the reality that balancing the many demands that are put on us is complex, messy and filled with emotion. The first step is to accept this and understand and appreciate why this is the case. Success at work and at home are hugely important to you. Your values are telling you this so spending more time paying attention on one at the expense of the other induces feelings of guilt and shame. This is normal fighting these emotions just creates more feelings of the same and greater tension as we end up making promises we cannot keep as we try to appease both parties. Once we accept that both are important and we understand why they evoke such strong emotions in us, we can stop creating a competition in our minds where one has to win out over the other. We can start to create a space where both can co-exist as essential interdependent parts of your life.
Set clear priorities
To set clear priorities it is important to be very clear what your core values are. If you are a regular reader of my blogs you will know the importance I place on understanding our values. To help identify your values first download Brene Brown’s values list, this will help you identify your values without trying to come up with a list by yourself. What you need to do now is to reduce this list to values that you relate to. Read through the list and pick 10 values that you relate to. Try to avoid aspirational values, just values that you think are personally important. Once you have your ten you now need to reduce this down to 3 core values. Three values that really resonate with you. Values that move you in to action, motivate you, describe who you are and are just non-negotiable. Take your time if you have two words that are similar say them both out loud. How do they make you feel, if you get an emotional response to one more than the other pick that value.
Once you are clear what your core values are you can use them as a barometer to start to prioritise aspects of your work and home life. So you can make decisions when one has to take precedence over the other to meet your values. Once you are able to make a value based decision on what you are going to do, you are then able to articulate your reasons for making that decision to those around you, reducing your feelings of shame.
Create clear boundaries
There is a comfort in having clear well signposted boundaries that are steeped in your values. The easiest way to do this is to create routines that separates work from home, clearly this is especially essential when working from home and even more so if you like me do a mixture of both. It is all too easy to start to allow work to leak in to your home time and the demands of home time to encroach on work. Working flexibly can be a double edged sword without clear boundaries being set that everybody agrees and understands. Things to consider are designated work spaces, allocated time as a routine to allow for exceptions to be negotiated rather than leaving it to chance. It is also worth considering transition routines. How do you transit from work mode to home mode and vice versa. This might be a physical commute, it might be closing the door of the home office, putting away the laptop or the tools of your work, opening the door, the getting out of the tools of the trade. Consider the clothes you wear. Is there are change of clothes between the two roles? Even when working from home I will wear my work clothes to get me into work mode. Changing out of your work clothes when work is done can also help you transit back into being back home.
How are you communicating what you require
If you keep all of these thought processes about creating this balance in your life to yourself, you will create confusion and resentment. Talk about what is important to you about both home and work with the people that are important to you at home and work. Once we have set our routines and boundaries, how are you going to articulate these to those that need to know? This is vital to manage everyone’s expectations. We all know that routines and boundaries will be tested and there will always be times where there will be exceptions. If you need to enter into negotiations about exceptions with family or work, they need to be clear what your boundaries are and what the reasons are for the exceptions. It might be that a particular emergency requires you to stay at work longer or make contact with work after your normal work day has finished, or attending your child’s school play means you will need to take some time off during the day. If communication is unclear or limited these events can cause frustration and tension. There will always be tensions between the two demands on your life, clear, honest and regular communication that is value based is essential to reduce tension and allow both demands to co-exist.
Don’t be a martyr
You don’t have to everything. The people around you are just as capable and can share the burden with you. You may have a tendency to sit on our own personal drama triangle equally spending time as a rescuer doing everything yourself and making sure everyone else at home and work are attended to. Then being the victim and feeling exploited and put upon by all around you. To then becoming a persecutor and blaming those around you for your difficult life. Take a breath take a step back and ask yourself who can help. Do I have to stay at work and do this or can I share the workload with my team or colleagues? Do I need to acknowledge that I need help to complete this task. At home do I have to take on all the domestic duties, can we share the workload so we can spend more valuable time together. Can extended family or friends help with childcare in the short term so I do not have to take more time off work. Remember you are not an island.
Don’t forget yourself
In the hustle and bustle of life it is easy to lose sight of ourselves and not spend time caring for ourselves. I have a very simple rule that works well. I allocate myself an hour of happiness everyday. I don’t have to do it all in one go, sometimes this hour might be made up of a couple of minutes here and 10 minutes there. I categorise happiness as any activity that gives me a sense of satisfaction, joy, pride, or just makes me smile. At the end of everyday I do an inventory of all the moments of happiness I have had during the day. This approach creates an intentionality of self-care that you might otherwise take for granted. When we take our happiness for granted it is easy not to notice when we start to sacrifice our own happiness. By making sure we have an hour of happiness we start to prioritise activities that contribute to this.
It is not about winning the game it is about staying in it
To quote Simon Sinek, we don’t win at life, we live it. Creating a balance between work and home is part of living our life. Achieving a balance between the 2 is not a final destination it is a process that requires maintenance. There is no first prize in winning at life and there is no prize for finishing first in the work-life balance race. We have to work at making sure we don’t sacrifice one for the other. Once we have a formula that helps us create a meaningful balance it requires tweaking to make sure that balance remains as our life changes and demands shift. The approach you used 10 years ago to maintain balance may not have the same effect a decade later. Agility and flexibility are essential, having a growth mindset and always looking to improve how you work and relax is the to key maintaining that balance.
Get help and support if when you need it
If you have a demanding job and a loving family creating a space where home and work can co-exist and draw strength from each other can be daunting. You don’t have to do this alone working with a coach like myself can help you create the foundations that will increase your chances of success.
If you are interested in starting a coaching relationship get in touch via email matt@mattycoach71.com or by direct messaging me through my social media pages.
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Well what a week that has been, in fact the past two weeks have been pretty full on. At moments I have felt a little overwhelmed, when I have contemplated the amount of work I have got to do, but when I have zoomed in what needs to be done and just got cracking it has been thoroughly enjoyable.
This week started off quietly, I had set aside Monday initially for admin. An opportunity to catch up on some paperwork and start planning for events I have planned in the next few months. One event in particular at the end of the month has been playing on my mind, a team coaching coaching event exploring and understanding the system in which a particular service lives. The aim of the event is to identify and articulate the relationships the service has and doesn’t have with other parts of the system, and assess which relationships, need strengthening, building or downgrading, to ensure the service operates effectively within the system. There is a lot of moving parts with this event, and quite a bit of preparation is needed, hence why it has been praying on my mind. So I spent the first part of the Monday morning revisiting my plans, and starting some of the prep work. When preparing for a group coaching session it is important not to fall into the trap of over engineering it and at the same time ensuring you have prepared the participants and created enough structure to ensure the session flows.
My colleagues were in the office which always creates a wonderful creative atmosphere, where we share ideas and offer each other different perspectives. In the afternoon I had a meeting about some potential work coming up in November. This is why I mentioned feeling a little overwhelmed by the amount of work that we have coming our way over the next few months. Monday was a day for a helicopter view, to ensure I was clear about what I still need to plan for and make sure I was fully prepared for the work I had to do this week. However when I was up there looking down it was a little daunting, so I did not stay up there too long before I came down and started preparing for the delivery work I had in my diary for the rest of the week.
On Tuesday I met with my colleague to run through the clinical supervision training we had planned for Thursday and Friday this week. It has been quite a few months since we have delivered this training so we just needed to make sure we were ok with the running order and who was doing what. In the afternoon I was delivering a webinar for one of our inhouse leadership programmes on Team Effectiveness. I love the subject but after a few years of delivering training via webcam I can honestly say it is not my favourite medium to deliver training, I much prefer in person training. The incidental side conversations where a lot of the learning happens does not happen naturally online. Saying that we had some useful conversations and the session went very well.
Wednesday was spent with a team of senior nurses providing specific leadership development designed for how they work and lead together as a team. The focus of todays session was how to use a coaching approach to leadership, conducting challenging conversations and the use of feedback in the moment to support team members performance and development. It was a wonderful session to be part of with everyone in the room actively taking part creating really rich conversations. I was buzzing at the end of the day. The feedback I got from those in the room was that they all were going to take away something from the day that they were going to start using at work.
Thursday was day 1 of our 3 day clinical supervision training. My colleague who co-facilitates with me and manages the training was unfortunately ill, so myself and another colleague who was coming along to observe as part of her role as Professional Nurse Advocate co-ordinator ran the day. We train Nurses and AHPs how to conduct clinical supervision on a one to one basis. We have an ever growing network of clinical supervisors from a variety of healthcare professions. Our Nursing and Midwifery colleagues also have the opportunity to complete PNA (Professional Nurse Advocate) or PMA (Professional Midwife Advocate) certificate. We had 8 candidates this time (we keep it to a maximum of 12 per cohort to maximise the learning). We had a Midwife, 4 Nurses, an ACP (Advanced Clinical Practitioner), a Radiotherapist and a Physiotherapist. The group gelled really quickly and the day went really well.
Friday was day 2 of clinical supervision training, it was a pleasure being in the room with these wonderful health professionals. The day just flew by and I was truly blown away by their skill and willingness to be vulnerable and learn.
When I got home on Friday evening I was exhausted. It has been such a full on week, but one of those weeks where I feel I have got so much done and made a difference. Weeks like this remind me why I love my job so much, and why I love coaching so much. They make up for those frustrating moments where it feels like nothing is going right.
I have posted this before, I wrote it a few years ago, when I did my Connected Living Podcast. I think it is worth sharing again, as we all need a reminder how easy it is to be consumed by our shame.
Our shame diminishes us; it stops us being vulnerable and therefore connected with those around us. Shame can quickly turn into blame, and jealousy, it encourages us to search for what disconnects us rather than what connects us.
When I think about what I am ashamed of, I realise that I have heard a lot of the descriptions I use from other people. We share a lot of our shame with the people around us. How ridiculous is that? So we all share common themes in the very thing that causes us not to share and drives our disconnection!
Now not all of our shame is shared by everyone, however the broad themes of our shame are. To illustrate this I will list a few things that create feelings of shame in me;
Not being handy, I am completely inept at all things DIY, every time a craftsman does some work around my house I feel that I am somehow less of a man. (I know it makes no sense and what I can and cannot do does not define me, but that is my initial feeling).
Having poor mental health, when my mental health is poor and my mood is low, I instantly go to a place of shame. I want to hide it away, I am afraid that I appear weak and flawed. Now this is an initial response, and I am able to overcome this shame, however every time I feel low I go straight to feeling ashamed and wanting to hide away.
Being overweight, I am not comfortable with how I look, it makes me feel like I am somehow a failure. I can hear you all shouting “go on a diet then!” You are right, I could do something about it. I have made attempts in the past with varying degrees of success. This then drives that shame of being weak willed and a complete failure. Oh god I can feel my jaw getting tight with shame just writing about it.
Some of you will recognise those feelings of shame that I have described. There are a lot more where they came from, but let’s not over share.
The society and culture I live in drive the three triggers of shame I have described. If you are going to be a successful man in our society you have to be able to build and maintain your home, keep your shit together and be strong and athletic, amongst many other things, which I probably do not possess.
Our shame and vulnerability is shaped by our map of the world (our paradigm). It is probably best to describe paradigms before we start to talk about how to tackle our shame and embrace our vulnerability.
Stephen Covey describes paradigms as our maps of the world. What is important to remember though is that a map is an interpretation of the territory before us and not the actual territory. It is important to make this distinction, as we will all have different interpretations of our territory even though we may share that territory with others. Our experiences and how we interact with our territory will determine how we draw/paint our map. The stories we are told will all add to the detail of our maps. The stories we hear come from a variety of sources, not just our families, but from our local community, news media, social media, and fictional media. This therefore creates a rich and detailed map that does share some similarities with those people we share a culture with. Below is a picture that is used frequently to describe paradigms and perception. Some of you will recognise it, and be able to see both the old lady and the young lady. Some of you will only be able to see one or the other.
Once you see either the old lady or the young lady for the first time, your paradigm has shifted and more detail is added to the map of your world. You will forever be able to see both. As we interact more with our surroundings the more detail we add to our map. These interactions create more data, which is then incorporated into our ever expanding map, however how we view this data is dependent on our previous experience with similar data. The problem is those previous experiences may not be our own, and may come from stories, many of which might not be completely factual. Can you see why parts of our map of the world might not be completely useful to us, and in fact can be destructive? It is important to challenge ours and others paradigms if we want to start to step out of this shame that our paradigms can generate.
So how do our paradigms shape our shame? It is probably best if we dissect some of the shame I experience and discover where it comes from. Let’s look at the shame driven by my body image. This is based on a few different paradigms. Firstly I see that our culture values men that are slim, muscular and athletic, and I am none of them, however if I ate correctly and exercised regularly I would have a body like this. Our society values people that eat healthily and exercise well, therefore I see people that live up to this ideal as successful. I do not live up to this ideal therefore I am not successful. Occasionally I will make half-hearted attempts to live up to this ideal and then give up, therefore I am a failure and therefore I am less valuable as a person, and that is where my shame comes from. If we don’t live up to our paradigms we can feel less valuable as a member of our community and this makes us feel ashamed. There is no reason why I don’t live a healthy lifestyle other than I choose not to, and if I don’t challenge my paradigm I feel really ashamed of this.
Up until a few years ago I was a smoker, this was a source of great shame. Everyone knows smoking is unacceptable (another paradigm), therefore every time I lit up a cigarette I would feel ashamed, every time I tried and failed to give up I would feel more ashamed. To all of you out there that smoke, you know it is bad for you, you know all of the reasons why you should give up, however the reasons you continue to smoke are just as valid. By all means feel guilty for smelling like an ashtray and making others cough. But your smoking does not diminish you as a person, I would still like you if you are funny and caring, you being a smoker does not change that, so don’t be ashamed, feel guilty but not ashamed. Guilt does not diminish you as a person, it accepts that you are as complex and flawed as the next person, and that we make mistakes and make poor decisions.
So how do we keep our shame in check? I don’t believe we can ever defeat our shame but we can keep it in check. The first thing to do is to think more critically about why we feel ashamed. What is our view of the world based on? Is it based on fact, or from stories we have been told. If it is based on stories, how accurate are those stories? Our paradigms come from our memory banks, and the problem with our memory banks is that they are generally a mix of fact and fiction. Therefore how reliable are our paradigms. If our paradigms struggle to stand up to critical review, why do we put so much store in them, and why should they drive so much shame? Just asking yourself why you think that way, can start to diminish your shame.
Let’s put this to the test with my body image shame. My shame is partly driven by my inability to stick to a diet and healthy lifestyle. When I think about it, the paradigm I am stuck in, is that I should find living a healthy lifestyle easy and therefore my inability to do this means I am somehow less of a person.
Now how does this stand up to scrutiny?
What evidence do I have that supports this paradigm?
Pictures of smiling toned healthy people on social media telling me how much they enjoy drinking kale and beetroot smoothies, and doing the plank.
How reliable is this source? Have I ever seen someone drinking a kale and beetroot smoothie or doing the plank in the flesh?
No I haven’t.
Have I ever drunk a kale and beetroot smoothie, if so what did it taste like?
Yes I have and it was the most disgusting thing ever.
Have you ever done the plank, and if so did you feel like smiling when you were doing it?
Yes I have, and no, I tried not to be sick if I am honest.
Just writing this has reduced my shame.
When you start picking apart your shame and what drives it, you start to treat yourself with empathy, you start to understand your own emotional response to your shame, this allows you to show yourself some compassion. Brene Brown in her books Daring Greatly, and Dare to Lead suggests that empathy is the antidote to shame. Empathy and compassion shine a light on that shame.
We are more accustomed to hearing about empathy and compassion in the context of showing them to others. Brene however also points out that, to truly be able to show empathy to others you have to be comfortable showing yourself empathy. Once you have started to diminish your shame you are able to successfully articulate your emotions when feeling that shame. When a friend is experiencing shame you are then able to draw on your own experience of shame, and can share those emotions with them. When we start sharing what shames us we start to recognise that many of the paradigms that drive our shame are shared by the people around us. When we notice that we share those emotions, and that diminishes the shame further.
By being present and responding to what is really happening, rather than anticipating what might happen based on what we believe has happened in the past, or what we believe people will think of us, and sharing those feelings, we can keep our shame in check. I don’t think it is possible to banish our shame completely but we can prevent it from ruling our lives.
We can often confuse guilt with shame. Now guilt is an emotion we feel after we have behaved badly or done something wrong. Guilt is nothing like shame. When you behave badly and subsequently feel guilty you are acknowledging that you have behaved in a way that you do not find acceptable, and that you are sorry that you behaved that way. Guilt provides the opportunity to make amends, to show accountability. By expressing guilt you are saying that you are not less of a person because of your behaviour, and you want to make it better. Shame says that as a result of your behaviour you see yourself as a bad person. For example if I feel guilty that I have not been able to stick to a diet, I am saying that I am not happy that I have not been able to stick to it, but I am not a failure, I do however need to find a diet and adjust my attitude to having a healthy lifestyle. My shame however says that I am a failure and I deserve to be fat and unhealthy, and I will always be fat and unhealthy, because I am useless. I much prefer to feel guilt. Guilt demonstrates dissatisfaction with the current status quo without diminishing my sense of self-worth.
If we want to tackle our shame, and start making meaningful changes to our lives we have to challenge our paradigms, start practicing empathy and sharing what drives our shame with the people we care about. It is possible to manage our shame, we just have to start being kinder to ourselves and each other.
The other day I was facilitating a team building session, and I had asked the participants to pick out at least 5 values that they felt were important to them. Not what they thought they should value but what they really valued. This is more challenging than you think it might be. As it is difficult to find the words that describe your values I provided them with 3 pages of words that describe their values. I then invited them to use the lists of values to start them off, but reminded them that they were not wedded to that list. Nobody used any values that were not on the list. Now this could have been that they were happy with the wide selection, or that they did not feel comfortable enough to tap into their individuality for fear of getting it wrong. This fear is driven by our shame. We all know how shame attempts to diminish us to make us less of a person. We all know now how to combat this shame. We do that by confronting it and talking about it with our fellow ashamed friends and colleagues. The problem is, that you have only just read the chapter on how to combat that shame. Fair enough you may have read Brene Brown’s work on shame and vulnerability, but shifting your shameful paradigm takes a lot of practice flexing your empathy muscle. So what else is there to do but avoid shame at all costs by not putting yourself at risk of mucking things up. “Probably best if you play it safe….remember the last time you tried to express your opinion at a meeting….you made yourself look a right tit”. I have said that to myself so many times. It has always led to me keeping my mouth shut in a meeting instead of letting people know, what I have observed or experienced as I was fearful that I would not be taken seriously and be dismissed, therefore diminishing my self-worth. The problem is with this approach is that it can end up having the same effect as the one you were trying to avoid. People could start to think that Matthew never contributes to meetings, he somehow appears disinterested, and is not engaged. Don’t get me wrong embracing your vulnerability is not about running off at the mouth at every opportunity. But perhaps I could have just been vulnerable and spoken up, and trusted my judgement that what I had to say had value. If it didn’t then the conversation would move on, I may feel a little silly, but I it has not harmed me.
The difficulty with avoiding vulnerability is that it is driven by our limbic system or mammalian brain, as is shame. It is evolutionary necessary for us to live in groups. It is important to us not to look foolish, as foolish means weak and less useful to the group, which may lead to us being cast out and left to starve to death lonely and unloved. Yeah I know a little extreme. The thing is the limbic system is primitive and it’s primary function is to keep us and our species alive. It does not care which century we are in or how dangerous our outside world is. If it is left unchecked it will assume any threat is a threat to life unless advised otherwise. Therefore when you notice that another member of your team is ridiculed behind their back for making a suggestion at a meeting, your limbic system makes a note to put in your memory bank, so the next time you are in a meeting and consider making a suggestion your limbic system, goes and gets that note and waves it in your face, saying don’t do it, you then get that funny feeling in your stomach and your mouth goes dry and you say nothing. The urge to say nothing is as strong as it would be if you were alive a thousand years ago about to question the leadership qualities of your village chieftain. Only you are not likely to be cast out or get your head chopped off. The limbic system has no understanding the current political climate it is just interested in you staying alive, it leaves all that stuff up to your frontal lobe.
So there you are embracing your vulnerability and confronting your shame is not going to be easy. Your limbic system is always going to scupper things and avoid vulnerability at all costs. Don’t worry though there is a way to manage how your limbic system responds.
Before we explore how to create the right conditions for you to be able to vulnerable it is important to explain why avoiding vulnerability and being a slave to your shame is not just toxic, it can be downright dangerous. Vulnerability avoidance can stop us from speaking up or acting when we see things are going wrong, things have been missed or when someone is acting with malicious intent. History is littered with testimony from bystanders that either did not think it was there place to say anything, they didn’t like to say anything or they were too afraid to say or do anything. I am not saying that to be able to embrace vulnerability you should put yourself in harm’s way. There have been occasions in history and to this day where people may be in mortal danger if they spoke up or acted on what they saw. Some of those people put themselves at risk and others didn’t, now that is a whole other debate that I have no wish to get into. If your life is in danger you are going to make decisions based on your values and what you are faced with. I am more concerned with situations much more commonplace, situations that happen on a daily basis.
When I was a Clinical Nurse Educator I taught Human Factors (risk management) to Health Professionals. The basic premise of this is that we are all at risk of making errors or contributing to errors as part of the error chain. One of those human factors that creates an environment for error is a steep authority gradient, where someone is clearly in charge. This leader however is not interested in discussion, and likes to let everyone know that they are in charge. Everyone is expected to do as they are told and there are consequences for disobedience. No doubt you can all think of examples of leaders like this either first hand or through stories. So imagine you are working in an environment like this, say for instance that you are a junior nurse on your first ward and you are involved in the resuscitation of a patient. The resuscitation is being performed by a domineering Consultant who is barking orders at everybody. All involved are clearly nervous, and no one is acting until they are told to do so by the Consultant. You notice that the green oxygen tubing that is attached to the bag and mask that the consultant is using to provide respirations to the patient is not attached to anything. It is you first ward but you are pretty sure that your tutor told you that the oxygen should be attached when using the bag and mask, but the Consultant is really shouting at everyone and you are too afraid to speak up just in case you have got it wrong. That patient subsequently dies, now how would you feel? Like you I would like to think that I would have spoken up, and faced the wrath of the consultant, and some of you would, but there are some of you who wouldn’t. Now imagine you are 18 and that Consultant is in his 50s with 30 years’ experience as a Doctor, how easy do you think it would be. This is not a real example, however I have witnessed situations where an authority gradient has put patients at risk, and I have read incident reports from all over the world describing this behaviour. There lies another problem, we have all heard examples of this behaviour and have a perception of the type of people and the situations where this authority gradient might be present. When you hear these stories your limbic system becomes very interested and lays down memories in your memory bank, just in case you encounter such people or those situations. So when you come across something that remotely looks familiar your limbic system leaps into action to ensure your safety. So regardless of whether or not this person and the culture they work within operate a steep authority gradient, you will behave as if there is one. So you start to perceive that if you speak up or act on your initiative that you will face sanctions regardless of the lack of concrete evidence. This perception of a steep authority gradient is just as dangerous as a real authority gradient. Our limbic system is on the whole very useful but it can be a right pain in the arse if you don’t manage it.
How do we embrace our vulnerability. What makes us do the things that make us vulnerable, like telling someone we love them, or walking in to that interview for a job? Well in those two circumstances it is the limbic system that can drive you taking the risk. After all the limbic system is interested in keeping you alive and keeping the species going. So it stands to reason that your mammalian brain would not have too much trouble doing either. After all having a good job and a partner are indications of being successful in our society (pack if you like). However speaking out when you think something is wrong can be very different, as I discussed earlier. So how can some people stand and say something when they notice someone senior doing something wrong and how can I get up and speak to large groups of people when it makes me so nervous.
The stories we tell ourselves have a big influence on whether or not we are willing to embrace our vulnerability. The stories we tell ourselves are influenced by the stories we hear from our friends and family, and then the myths and folklore we hear, as we grow up and what we hear at work. All of this fact and fiction from a such a wide variety of sources is all jumbled up filed in our memory bank, to be used at a later date either by our human brain or our chimp brain. In his book The Chimp Paradox Professor Steve Peters describes these memories as either autopilots (positive) or gremlins (negative). So when the mammalian brain goes running off to the memory bank to look for precedent to justify its continued involvement in the situation and its subsequent actions to keep you safe, it comes across either gremlins that justify its involvement or autopilots where it can handover control of the situation to the human brain. The trick is then to create autopilots or positive/benign memories for certain situations that we have come across where our mammalian brain has stepped in and prevented us from embracing our vulnerability. The thing is our memory bank is not that great at distinguishing between fact and fiction. When we start talking about and sharing our memories, especially those that drive our shame, then we can run them past our human brain and the human brains of our companions. With everyone in the room using their human brains we can fact check the information we hold about certain people, places and situations. It is then possible to rearrange previously held inaccurate memories that were gremlins, so they become autopilots. As mentioned in previous chapters talking and sharing shines a light on shame and changes it from a monster to in the corner of the room to your dressing gown hanging on the door. When collecting new information be sure to check the facts. Practice thinking critically, don’t just take things at face value, check what assumptions you are making about the information you are being presented with, how much of it is true and how much is just made up, and how can you check how accurate it is. Most things are never as bad as they seem. Notice I wrote the word practice, thinking critically is not an easy thing for most of us to do. So if you really are serious about embracing your vulnerability you really will have to practice examine some of the stories we hear that become part of our memory bank. Now the questions you ask yourself are very similar to those you ask when examining your shame. After all these stories and memories form the basis of that shame that stops you from being vulnerable. Below is a quick checklist to use when confronted with new stories or when you are examining old memories.
Did I witness it first hand?
If not
How reliable is the source of information?
What assumptions am I making about this information?
How can I check its validity?
Do I believe it?
If I do believe it what are the implications?
I know it can be a little bit laborious to start with, but once you start practicing it does get easier and easier.
I mentioned it earlier that I get nervous every time I teach or speak publicly as most people do. When I was younger it did it so much so that I just would not do it. Even up to 6 years ago when I became a clinical nurse educator I really struggled to stand up in front of people. The story I told myself was that I was boring, I had nothing important to say and more importantly the audience thought I was stupid and useless. When I examined this story critically I established that yes I could be a little boring at times and there were sometimes gaps in my knowledge. I could however change those things by listening to what people needed, knowing the subject and adding a bit of myself to the teaching. When it came to the audience having a poor opinion of me as a person I exposed very quickly that this had no basis on fact and existed in my mind and nowhere else. Now no doubt there will be people who do not like me, but I cannot do anything about that. So I adjusted what I needed to do and regularly enter the arena of the classroom or lecture theatre. I am still scared and nervous but I am able embrace my vulnerability as my chimp mind only now sees autopilots in my memory bank instead of gremlins.
A year has now passed since we lost Mum. I can easily say it has been the most difficult year I have experienced. I have spent most of the year reliving the last few weeks of her life. This has caused me immense pain over the past 12 months. Back in May I had a series of counselling sessions that were very helpful in preparing me for the 28th August. Since May I have been working on not getting stuck in my past and projecting that onto my fears about the future. The anniversary of the last month of her life and her death on 28th August were still looming though and I still needed to reflect on and reconcile the strong emotions I have about this time. Last Monday was the culmination of that reflection. The week before was our Wedding Anniversary and we spent the week in Bournemouth, it was a glorious week of relaxation and being in each others company reflecting. I needed that week, as I could feel myself getting stressed about how I would cope on the 28th.
We had decided to go to Hornsea on Monday, Mum loved going there every time she came to visit us. She loved having fish and chips on the seafront from Sullivans and then going to Hornsea Freeport. So that is what we did. We got our fish and chips and sat in our usual place looking out over the North Sea, thinking about Mum and how much she loved the sea. We laughed as we remembered how she would always try to offer me half of her chips and proclaim with her mouthful how lovely the fish was. We then went to have a wander around the Freeport to seek out some bargains. Whilst at the Freeport Lisa suggested we go to the garden centre and buy a rose, in memory of Mum. Mum always had roses in her front and back garden. We both had like a white rose she had in her back garden, on numerous occasions we had tried to take cuttings of it with no success. Up until that point in the day I had managed to keep my composure, I could feel myself losing it rapidly. On the way to the garden centre I was holding myself that tightly that I started to cramp in my back and on the right side of my chest. If I am honest and started to worry about whether I was having a heart attack. It didn’t spread any further but the more I tried to relax the tighter my chest got. It didn’t stop until we had chosen a rose paid for it and got in the car.
Mum died at 16:18 on the 28th August 2022, that exact time will be etched in my mind for the rest of my life. So just after 4pm on Monday I took her picture from our dining room and put it on the garden table, and got myself and Lisa a drink to mark the moment of her passing and toast her life. At 18 minutes past we raised our glasses to the picture. At that point my composure completely broke and I sobbed and sobbed. It was such a relief to allow the pain out, to express how much I missed her and our past. We started to talk about Mum and our memories of her and the impact she still has on us. I then said it was time to stop living in the past and regretting it’s passing. Life moves on, Mum is no longer physically with us and she never will be, her life came to an end 12 months ago at the age of 80. She lived a full and meaningful life having three children, 4 grandchildren, one step grandchild, and one great granddaughter. She saw all her grandchildren grow up into adulthood and start fulfilling their dreams. She taught us all to be caring, compassionate, good people, as her Mum had taught her. To honour her life and ensure she lives on, all we have to do carry on living our lives to the full never forgetting the impact she has had on who we are. We cannot do that if we spend all our time wishing we could turn back time. We live now the impact we have on those around is happening.
It is time to look forward and live my life well to honour Mum.
I have started being coached again recently, it started because I wanted to support a trainee coach with her confidence in coaching. I could see something in her that would make her a very special coach. She is a very experienced health professional, who is self aware enough to naturally hold her own judgement and desire to help lightly, to allow her coachee to explore their thoughts and emotions without interference. She naturally holds the coachee’s space well, but just like many of us coaches she has this learned desire to solve the problem, that we all have to unlearn. That led me to engage in a coaching relationship with her. After having counselling after the loss of Mum I needed to work out how to connect back up with myself and get back to leading my life authentically. The time was right for me to have a space where I can explore what is getting in the way of me living the that meets my values.
I had my second coaching session yesterday, and the impact on me has been quite profound. After the first session I made some choices about what I needed to stop doing , to enable me to focus on what is currently important. I was studying for a coaching supervision qualification, and it is was causing me to anxious daily and was distracting me from important work that I have been doing and exacerbating the emotions I am feeling about the anniversary of my Mum’s death that is coming up at the end of the month. My choice was to stop the qualification as it was not serving me well. There was a lot of guilt, and shame about associated with giving up the course. The guilt of letting people down who had sponsored me to complete it, and my tutor and fellow students. Shame for failing and giving up, that rhetoric of being a quitter is strong. In fact the quitter rhetoric was the most destructive, and in fact was the biggest hurdle I had to overcome. That coaching session helped me confirm my thoughts about continuing something that is damaging you to avoid the shame of being a quitter is ridiculous. Saying it out loud and talking through my reasons for stopping, helped me face those feelings of shame, by being self-compassionate and curious.
As I said earlier yesterday’s coaching session was quite profound. It has been a few weeks since I had made the decision to stop the supervision course, and I am now feeling a lot lighter. I feel like I am able to see more of my world, my head is up and I am looking around. There are still pockets of anxiety around my performance, but perhaps they are useful and justified. So our coaching session centred on feeling lighter and starting to lead a more authentic, value based life. I started to explore and understand what was working for me at work and home. I am again focussing on my compassion, which is underpinned by being courageous and useful. The choices I am making about what I do are based on those two core values, does it embrace being useful and courageous. Now it does not mean that I am being overtly both these, it more than often means that I am looking for them in the work I do, for instance can I support others to be more useful and that may require them to be courageous in the process. I have been working with a few teams and individuals recently who are acting so courageously in the pursuit of making a difference and being useful to society and those around them. Working with people when this is their focus gives me such a buzz. This buzz has given me optimism for the first time in a long time. I feel optimistic about my life and life in general. Life can be fulfilling, and we can all flourish, we will face incredible challenges throughout our lives but we can flourish and ride those turbulent waters.
This has got me thinking about my coaching practice and what I offer as a coach outside of my full-time job. As you will know I offer my services as a coach privately which over recent years has focussed on supporting people to create a meaningful work-life balance. With my new insight in how I need to lead my life, this seems a little restrictive. I have also been thinking recently about how I could support people with choosing or changing careers. I think work-life balance and career coaching are in many ways completely connected, I am also realising that they mean different things to different people and can cause people a lot stress, as they may feel the need to confirm to what society says is a good work life balance and what is a worthwhile career. We tend to attach ourselves completely to what we do. I trained to be a Nurse, so when I qualified I became a Nurse. I now work as an Organisational Development Manager and Coaching Lead. So I was a Nurse and I am now a Coaching Lead. But this is not true I used to work as a Nurse and my job now is Coaching Lead. I am neither of these things, they are things I do or did for work. I am Matt Smith. This is what I want to focus my coaching on, going back to my original idea of connected coaching. This idea is that to be able to lead a fulfilling life, it is vital to understand completely and embrace who we are, what it important to us and what impact we want to make on the world. This will help us make choices about the work we do, how much time we spend doing work and how much time we spend with friends, family and leisure. There are different times in our lives when we can lose connection with ourselves, when we set out on our adult life, post full-time education whether that is after secondary school or university, then there is mid career as we reflect on the impact our life has had, and finally as we approach the end of our career and contemplate retirement. There are many other life events around these times that cause us to pause and reflect, such as the birth of children, having school age children, children leaving school, divorce, and bereavement.
With this in mind I am simplifying my offer of coaching. If you feel lost or unsatisfied in work and life, then maybe it is time to re-connect with yourself again and start making choices that are important for you and not what you think you should be doing.
If you wonder if you might benefit from re-connecting with yourself, drop me a line, we can have a conversation and find out if it is what you would want to do.
I have had a break from writing for a few months, I think I needed a period of recovery after a difficult year.
We have just got back from holiday, and I was hoping I would return refreshed and firing on all cylinders. It hasn’t worked out like that. I still feel mentally jaded, I wanted to say I am still mentally exhausted, but that isn’t true I do feel better than I did. Afterall I am writing this blog, but I am still struggling to feel fully engaged with the world. I have to remember that I have been doing battle with my thoughts and feeling for months, so I should expect to still feel the effects of this. Giving myself the time and permission to recover at the pace I need, is much harder than it seems. All week I have felt flat and listless, I have tried my hardest to cover this up and be up beat. I finished my counselling last month, and I have been on a lovely holiday, so I shouldn’t feel like this. This morning I realised I was starting to fall into the trap I fell into earlier in the year when I was putting pressure on myself to get over the loss of my Mum. All I succeeding in doing then was make things worse, and make the pain from the grief more intense. My counsellor helped me stop fighting my emotions and understand them and reconcile them with who I am. That stopped the acute pain, I can now feel normal emotions without justifying them in the context of loss. It sounds strange but I can have a normal relationship with the memory of my Mum, I can laugh, cry, feel frustrated, angry, sad, and happy without feeling guilty.
The thing is, holding that relationship with my grief so tightly for so long and trying to control and constrain my thoughts and emotions is exhausting. I am not sure how I appreciated how exhausting it is. I have done all the right things to aid my recovery, I have rested and restored myself. However as usual I put a time limit on it, and told myself I would be firing on all cylinders when I got back from our holiday. It felt like I was hanging onto a cliff face by my fingers, desperately hanging on with all my energy to stop myself from falling, then with help from Lisa (my counsellor) I loosened my grip on the rocks and realised the ground was only inches away and all I had to do was trust myself and take a step. This morning I am resolved that I am nearly there but not quite, I need to give myself a little more time. That doesn’t mean I need to do less, I wont be going back on holiday or reducing what I do. What I will do is just accept that I will still feel jaded, and flat and not judge myself for this. I am not getting worse again, I am not suffering from a mental illness, this is not abnormal. I am just still recovering.
I have resolved to be more aware of the self-care I need. I stopped my daily journal when I was away, and I have not started it back up yet, so from tonight I will start populating my journal. I will continue to walk for at least an hour (continuously) every other day at least whilst listening to an audio book (I am currently listening to Wolf Hall). I will endeavour to write a blog every week. I will keep doing the things that make me happy and that just are just for me every day.
I have a tendency to over complicate and over think, which will often result in me frantically clinging on to cliff faces that are only inches of the ground. Rest and recovery is simple really when I pay attention to my thoughts and feelings, recognise and accept why I feel that way, allow myself to feel that way, and take action on activities that meet my values and bring me joy.
My message to myself and anyone that is struggling with thoughts and emotions, is don’t hold yourself too tightly, loosen your grip, allow yourself to feel those emotions, be gentle with yourself, it might take longer than you want to recover, you can’t rush it, it will take the time it takes.
Connected Coaching 