Coaching - Feel for yourself, fight for yourself
I don’t do coaching on basic nonprofit issues anymore, like dealing with Board bullies or difficult staff.
But if you want help mastering the Deep Nurturance OS, I’d be glad to talk with you about that.
You can set up a free one–hour call with me, or you can set up a coaching appointment at the bottom of this page.
Advocating for Activists is a companion to my book Asking More of Love. If you want to learn about the mission to upgrade love and deepen nurturance, you can check it out here.
My primary coaching program is based on my Asking book, and in case you might be interested in it, here it is.
Feel for Yourself, Fight for Yourself
Let’s start with tenderness.
If you decide to work with me, that’s what I recommend, that we start with tenderness. For you.
I think of coaching as sacred time…
Personal sacred.
Because in your sessions, you get to…
Ask for what you need, simply and directly, not what you think you should need, but what you really do need, and
Tell the truth about how you’re hurting, and
Shut down the attacks of your inner critic, and
Become your own person.
Through it all, you get to…
Hold yourself in your own heart, in the deepest place in your heart, with compassion.
When I was in coaching school, fellow students told me, “You have a very gentle way of doing very powerful coaching.” I didn’t pay attention until the fifth time I heard that same thing almost word for word.
This wasn’t something I was trying for consciously. But when I thought about it, it made sense because more than anything I believe in the power of love. I don’t believe love can always work miracles. I don’t believe it can’t be defeated. But I do believe in living by love no matter what.
So when people ask me what kind of coach I am, I tell them I’m intense, because I’m serious about my clients getting what they need. But I’m not a tough-guy coach, because the most effective coaching is also the kindest.
My favorite thing in all the world is to help people deepen their self-love. I believe the essence of self-love is that you…
Feel for yourself and fight for yourself.
Because…
The more deeply you feel for yourself, the more motivated you are to fight for yourself.
And then, reciprocally…
The better fighter you become, the safer you are being tender out in the world.
Personally, I’ve come to understand that…
My fight can only be as fierce as my tenderness runs deep.
Do you know what it’s like to have someone listens to you so intently that…
You find yourself digging deeper and surprising yourself with what you hear yourself saying.
How about if we make your coaching work like that?
And then what if those surprises become your future?
Next, let me answer some of the questions you might have about the details of coaching.
What’s it cost?
I charge $100 an hour. But if at the end of your first hour, you’re clear I’m not a match for what you need then that session is free.
I’ve been told by colleagues that given my experience and the depth of the coaching I do, I should be charging at least $200 an hour. But I don’t want to do that.
I want my coaching to be affordable. I want the people I work with to be able to afford more coaching time and so make faster progress.
And I guess I’m old-fashioned enough to still think $100 is serious money.
How often do we talk?
I recommend an hour each week or an hour every other week.
How does the first session work?
I used to do what’s called a “sample session” so people could check out coaching. But I noticed that some people thought that meant a pretend session. So now I make it clear that the first session is for real. We’re doing real coaching from the start.
Here’s how it works. I’ll handle the coaching. And I’ll make sure you’re okay every step of the way. All you have to do is keep saying what’s true for you moment by moment. And keep telling me what you need as best you can. I say “all,” but if you do those two things that’s a lot, isn’t it?
In that first session, feel free to push on me to see what I’m made of. The most important part of coaching is the match between the client and the coach. So please ask me your hardest questions. No need to be polite. No need to hold back. This is your time. It’s your turn. After all, this is your life we’re talking about.
What are the sessions like?
We’ll design them together. And we’ll design them around how you personally make progress.
Your sessions may follow a pattern if that works for you. Or they might be very different one from the other.
For example…
Some days you might come prepared with a clear agenda that you want to work on.
Or some days you might show up with an agenda, but then get surprised and something entirely new happens.
Or some days you might come to your call rattled or stressed and you haven’t had time to think about what you want to do with your session. That’s fine, too. That won’t slow us down one bit. We’ll explore and discover, and sometimes these totally improv sessions are among the best ones.
There are no shoulds with coaching. Which means you don’t have to be a “good” client. You get to be you. In fact, if there’s a day when you need to be a “bad” client with a bad attitude, go for it.
Maybe you’ll tell me, “I’m not in the mood today.” Or, “I’m tired of working on myself.” Or, “I’m sick of coaching.” Down at the bottom of such feelings, there’s always something delicious, maybe even a breakthrough.
How do we know when to stop?
Endings can be uncomfortable, but they don’t have to be. When you’ve got what you need from coaching, that’s it, you’re done. Let’s not continue to drift along out of habit.
Just tell me you’re ready to stop and we’ll bring the coaching to a graceful close. Maybe you’ll want to take a bit of time to talk about what’s next for you or to celebrate your victories.
For my part, when someone I’ve been working with stops coaching, I miss them. Coaching is a serious commitment on your part and on my part, both. So I miss people when they leave. And I’m glad I do. I’m glad to have had that kind of connection.
The Program I Offer
I call what I do coaching because that’s a term people are familiar with. But when I’m talking to myself about my coaching I call it…
Primal play.
Why play? Because…
Play is the superpower of human development.
Kids learn through play more than any other way. And play is much better for boosting their self–esteem than sitting in a classroom being drilled on facts and tested and graded.
But play is not just for kids. We adults can use play to fast–track problem–solving and deepen self–development. And given our greater maturity and life experience, we can make our play a quantum–jump more powerful that it was in childhood.
I call this upgraded play primal, because of how deep it reaches and how…
It has the power to help us take on our toughest, most urgent issues.
Like upgrading love. And confronting the terrible danger we humans are in. And dealing with the death of hope.
If you’re going to take on such issues, please prepare yourself first, because…
You’re going to need all your inner resource working for you.
Which brings me to the five–stage coaching program I offer. I call the stages “adventures” to make it clear that the coaching I do is not a slog. I know what it’s like to be in therapy and it just grinds along week after week in struggle mode. I really don’t like that at all. And that’s not the best path to progress.
Five adventures one after the other turn into a journey. If you follow this program all the way through, it’s quite a journey, challenging, yes, but more rewarding than it is challenging.
When we bring the healing power of play to each of your coaching sessions, then those sessions become…
Serious fun.
Because…
They’re so very serious and so very fun.
And now here’s the program. It’s got structure, it follows a plan, but it’s also very flexible. As you go through it you’ll be making it your own.
ADVENTURE #1 – Collecting your best moments
The first step is to…
Discover your best moments.
These are times when you were able to feel for yourself deeply and then fight for yourself beautifully. And you’ll find them in early childhood and right up to the present.
Some of these moments pop out of your memory immediately because they’re so obvious. But others will take some digging, because they’ve faded away into forgetfulness.
And others will take serious work. You might find some of your best moments are buried under a layer of pain and it will take a push to get through the pain to reclaim the moment.
Sometimes a best moment looks on the surface like a defeat. But if you investigate, you discover there’s a surprising victory inside that defeat. These moments might turn out to be some of your favorites because they’re hard–won.
Second…
You gather these moments together.
And immerse yourself in them all at once.
Which is a very different experience than remembering them randomly one at a time every now and then. When I did this, it flipped how I saw myself. I quit thinking of myself as a shame–burdened failure and claimed a new identity as a love–oriented fighter.
Imagine what might happen for you.
Third…
You get to play with these moments.
You can dialogue with them and see what they have to teach you. You can develop a deeper relationship with them and let them nurture you. You can discover nuances you never saw before.
You can have two moments dialogue with each other. And I’ll bet they’ll have a lot to say. Maybe you’ll bring in a third or fourth moment to make a party out of it.
You can put your moments on 3×5 cards, one each on a card. In the morning you can draw a card at random and invite the spirit of that moment to stay with you through your day, inspiring you. Or you can sort through the cards and pick the one that calls to you most.
Once you get started, I’ll bet you’ll come up with a dozen or more ways to play with these moments.
Now, if you decide this first adventure is enough for you and you want to stop here instead of taking the whole journey, no problem. You still get to celebrate because you’ll have done something remarkable. You’ll have deepened your self–love and this will stay with you and sustain you for the rest of your life.
But if you want to continue, then you’ll move on to…
ADVENTURE #2 –Discovering your inner guides
When I talk about inner guides, I don’t mean some woo–woo, mystical somethings, but down–to–earth beings who give you practical advice and bring you healing of the kind you need.
If you don’t like the phrase “inner guide,” you can talk instead about imaginary friends. Studies show that kids with imaginary friends get a significant boost in their development from such friends.
You can also use the term “parts.” This is common in therapy settings. Like how someone might say, “Part of me is jazzed about this new relationship, and part of me is scared.”
You can personify a part, which means you give it a personality, turn it into a character or let it turn itself into a character. And then it becomes much like a guide.
Which I like because…
I find it more fun to play with personifications than abstractions.
In this stage of the program, I’ll use a special process to help you discover your inner guides and develop a relationship with them. Then you and your guides get to play your way into making important decisions and you get to play your way into deeper healing.
If you choose to stop here, you get to celebrate because, again, you’ve achieved something remarkable. And I’ll bet your guides will be happy to celebrate with you.
Some guides will fade away if you don’t need them anymore, and new ones will appear. But you’ll likely have a guide or two or three who become so important to you and so helpful that they’ll stay with you for the rest of your life. And then even on your loneliest days, you won’t have to feel alone.
But if you’re ready to continue on, then the next stage is…
ADVENTURE #3 – Putting your inner critic out of business
When I decided I wanted to shut down my inner critic…
I tried bargaining: “Hey, let’s look at this rationally. When you pressure me and scare me, you throw me off balance and I actually do worse, so how about toning it down?” But the inner critic is driven by fear, so reasoning doesn’t work.
I tried begging: “Please, please stop hurting me.” But that only proved to it that I was too weak to take care of myself and therefore needed even bigger doses of its “help.”
I tried counterattacking: “You’re a bully! I hate you! Shut up and leave me alone!” But that meant I was playing its game on its turf where it had the home–field advantage. It was far better at attack than I was at counterattack, so it always won.
I tried taming my inner critic, as a popular self–help book tells us to do. But what a wretched thing to keep as a pet.
Four failures.
So I studied the evolution of inner critics in human history. Turns out it’s the personification of shame. And shame is a social emotion, it comes from outside us, it comes from the tribe we grow up in. It’s a means of social control. It’s a means of enforcement of tribal norms.
And I realized I didn’t need the critic, because why would I want to take guidance from a society that’s destroying itself or a species that’s killing itself?
So I switched to an inner focus. I put together my own moral core and developed it until it was stronger than my inner critic. Which made the critic irrelevant. I wasn’t under its spell anymore and suddenly it was so much easier to shut down.
In this process, I called on the spirit of play to help me out. And why? because…
Play is kryptonite to the inner critic.
The inner critic doesn’t know what to do with it.
So in this stage of the program, you get to take your inner critic by surprise. You get to…
Shut it up and shut it down.
And you’ll get good at making your own decisions really on your own. So you’ll become…
Self-creating.
Again, if you decide to stop here, you’ll have a achieved something profound. You’ll be critic–free for the rest of your life.
But if you decide to continue, then the next stage is…
ADVENTURE #4 – Upgrading your love
Now we’ve come to…
The main event of this journey.
The other three stages are the warm–up for this one.
The coaching I do is most closely tied to my book, Asking More of Love Than We’ve Ever Asked of It. I start this book by saying that…
We humans are a developmental species, and so human love is developmental. Which means we can upgrade it. We can make of love something way better than the default evolution gave us.
Upgrading love is the heart of this book and of my coaching program. And it’s a gutsy heart, because asking more of love asks more of you…
But then it gives you back way more than what it asks.
And as you work your way deeper into the serious challenges of this stage, we’ll focus on you being smart and strategic and taking very, very good care of yourself every step of the way.
I’ve got so many happy things to say about upgrading love, but there’s a dark side too, because…
In order to do this work, we have to get behind the scenes. We have to understand the history of human love. We have to understand how it was made and what its limitations are. And to get to this understanding we have to go down to the bottom of the human operating system and this can shake you to your core.
Because down there you confront the source of human evil and come face to face with the death of hope.
So when I talk about serious fun, I really, really mean the serious part. Nothing could be more serious.
Most people don’t want to take such a journey, and I don’t blame them.
But I’ve been on this journey for decades now and I’m thankful for it. For me, the blessings have been worth the hard parts. It’s not like I felt that every day along the way. Not at all. But given where I’ve gotten to in my life, I’m purely thankful.
And on the rougher days, what I discovered is that…
In the darkest places we find the deepest compassion.
If you decide to move into this fourth stage, you’ll find it’s a place where you can settle down and stay. Because there’s no end to it. You can go on deepening your love for the rest of your life.
There’s a fifth stage waiting for you if you want it. But you don’t leave the fourth stage behind to move on to it. Instead you get to…
Bring the fifth stage into the fourth stage.
ADVENTURE #5 – Being there for others
As you go further with upgrading love, as you get really good at it, you can then, in turn, be there for others…
Maybe you’re a therapist and two of your clients resonate with the mission to upgrade love and they’re eager to start the journey. You can work with them because you’ve done this work first with yourself.
Maybe you’re an activist in a mastermind group with six other leaders who are wrestling with despair. So you introduce them to this upgrade journey and it brings them back to life and they look to you for guidance.
Maybe you’re the parent of a college–age daughter and she’s depressed about how bad things are getting in the world and she’s scared about her future. You talk to her about how upgrading love can protect her against despair. And she says yes. And now you get to help her discover her own journey.
Maybe your intimate partner sees you doing better than ever and asks to join you in your journey. And now the intimacy the two of you share goes deeper than you ever imagined.
And maybe and maybe. There are so many possibilities.
Being there for someone, walking with them hand–in–hand on their upgrade journey, is thrilling. And so very deeply satisfying.
Next step
If this primal–play approach to coaching sounds intriguing and you want to try out a session, let me know in the form below.
Tell me a bit about yourself if you like, and what you’re looking for. Then give me a few times that work best for you for our first call and I’ll see if I can match one of them. I’m in California so that’s Pacific time.
Best wishes,
—Rich