From Abundance to Ease

Another year in the life of a coaching business and this feels like an annual event to get some thoughts down on paper, screen, about how it’s gone. Mainly as a reflective exercise for me, but I also realise from the feedback I get, that there is some value for other people in a similar stage in their own businesses.

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The year started with one word. Abundance. I wrote about that at the end of last year. I was hoping for a 2023 business year that was abundant and so it came to pass.

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Some new work arrived at the start of this year, which has been a privilege and a joy. I have been working with coaches who are developing their businesses as part of a role working as a mentor with The Coaching Revolution. I enjoy working within this community of kick ass coaches and mentors and knowing that there is a place where I can continually learn, grow and develop myself as well as the mentees that I work with. I am looking forward to more of the same in 2024.

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I have been working with great colleagues and friends at Ascensio again this year delivering a brilliant leadership development programme. An absolute pleasure and privilege to work with local government leaders who are driven, passionate and committed to being and doing their best for the communities they serve. I am learning a lot, laughing quite a lot and embracing the opportunity to make a tangible difference on my home turf.

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I have carried on my work as an associate coach for a number of organisations that provide coaching to senior leaders within the public sector, new graduates and to neurodivergent adults. I have thoroughly enjoyed this work and have been completely humbled by many of the people I have worked with as they have stretched themselves to apply for new roles, challenged themselves to change old ways of being and working, established new boundaries in work and at home and are working, being and living in ways that are having an impact on them now and will continue to do so for years to come.

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My private coaching practice has continued to flourish, both with 1-1 work and group coaching. Working with women, many of whom are midlife, knackered, public sector, third sector and running small businesses. There have been house moves, relationship changes, new jobs, getting rid of old habits, work-life balance, career planning, and so much positive and utterly humble shifting of perspectives, views, and lives, that there aren’t words to describe.

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I won’t go on again about why I am so passionate about supporting women within the public sector, other than to say that keeping midlife women and their talent in the sector, speaking their truth, being able to be leaders with integrity, being brilliant role models for other women in their organisations as well as making the lives of the people they serve better is why I get out of bed.

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I have been invited to speak on podcasts, contribute to blogs and to contribute a book chapter. I have delivered lunch and learn sessions on midlife women in the workplace, group coaching within the workplace for midlife women and am looking forward to more of the same in 2024. I want to help organisations keep their midlife female talent.

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I was pleased and proud to attain ICF PCC status this year and also to train as a mentor coach which will be a new offering for other coaches in 2024 once I have completed working with my volunteer clients in January.

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I have had some brilliant, thought provoking 1-1 supervision this year and started working with a new supervisor in the autumn and I am looking forward to continuously stretching myself and my practice.

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I have made so many new connections this year, both within the world of coaching and outside. I have been part of a brilliant local business network and have invested in a range of support for myself and my business. Finally biting the bullet and accepting that the only way I can carry on doing this thing is if I outsource some of the background doing of things. That has included some admissions that some of the support that I had in place wasn’t what I needed and that it needed to go in place of the hassle of finding something, someone else. Yes it takes time but that time saves you time when you have the right people in the right place doing the right things, crucially at the right time so you can let it go from your mind.

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There has been quite a lot of what some people see as hustle this year. You are always on linkedin, I see your posts all the time, do you really post every day and so on and so forth. This has been a bit of a journey over the last few years. I started my Linkedin account in 2011 so maybe I was a bit of an early adopter. I didn’t used to post a great deal, mainly staying in the shadows so that I didn’t get in peoples way. So I didn’t annoy people. It still grates a little when someone says in real life, oh I unfollowed you by the way, because you know, so may posts. But what I have learnt and now teach, is that no one cares. Honestly, no one does. No one sees the entirety of what you post and your job if you run a business is to show up and tell people. That’s it. It’s not boasty or who does she think she is, or braggy or any of that mindless monkey shizzle. It’s very much more simple than that. If you run a business then it's your job to tell people consistently. No one is coming to save you.

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There has been a lot of personal learning this year too. Show me a year when that doesn't happen…but there has been a lot.

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I got married at the start of the year, February, having decided and arranged it in January. That traditionally miserable time of the year, passed in a delicious haze of secret planning, venue, hotel, mini moon, dress, flowers, shows and all the other stuff that goes with running away to Gretna to marry the love of your life, while in fact not telling anyone in your life that’s what you are doing.

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It was absolutely joyous, and what was even more joyous was the response that we got from everyone around us. Close friends, family, colleagues, strangers on the internet. So much love coming our way.

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It’s a strange thing getting married again when you are 50. All that knowledge of the fact that love may be a many splendoured thing but it is also a thing that is precious, needs nurturing, and should be the centre of the universe alongside all the menial day-to-day transactional stuff that needs doing.

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Getting married in later life means that you are very often lugging along some baggage at the same time. Previous relationships, ex-partners, old in-laws, friends, foes and everything in between. The knowledge that some of your friends are seeing you in your second, third, fourth wedding car and wondering what is going to be different this time. What have you learnt, who even are you now? All those bad habits you used to moan about, are they actually yours, something you create, something you can’t live without and will keep creating. Wherever you go, there you jolly well are.

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Becoming a godmother for the first time came as a lovely surprise. There have been nowhere near enough small baby cuddles, and so my hope for 2024 is that there are more. How many are enough in any case. How do you even quantify such a thing.

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Being a mother of teenage boys has been another year of learning and loving and learning some more and no, I have no idea why they are so bloody tall. Or what I am feeding them. Think it's genetics mostly. Or maybe I am shrinking. Maybe we all are.

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Being a parent of teens, is a brilliant lesson in control, as in letting go of, or more accurately trying to work out which bits of control are worth trying to keep or fight for and which battles are no longer yours. If anyone has the answer to this in relation to GCSE revision and the year that is about to unfold for us as a family then I am all ears. All of me.

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Talking of family, ours is a sort of blended one. My ex husband and my husband and I co parenting the boys. It’s a blooming magical mystery ride. One that we are learning through and working out each day. My ex and I do the parenting, and make the parenting decisions and my husband is on hand for all the other parenting driving here and there, giving advice, cooking, and washing, All the bloody washing, where does it come from and how do they manage to use so many towels in a day, why can they never find any clean underwear and socks, why are there so many socks. What number is peak sock. How will we know when we have reached it.

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Friends, mostly women, brilliant, midlife sassy, gorgeous, kick ass, bright, soft, wise, glorious, joyous. I have gathered a gaggle from childhood through to the new friends I have made this year and I hope will continue to make every year. Some new people, some existing people that I am seeing through new lenses, some strengthening of existing bonds and some letting go. Maybe for now, maybe for longer.

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An emotional and beautiful funeral of a dear colleague, client and friend in late December. Unexpected and a whole whirl of emotions. From disbelief, to shock, to anger, to understanding and maybe some acceptance that the legacy is bigger, brighter and more brilliant than maybe anyone realised. That journey isn’t done yet though. There is work to do and a group of people who have a compass pointing in the same direction to do this with. Maybe.

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Being a school governor has been another year of pride in the school that I work with, the young people, learning about the mysteries of the education system and mostly feeling in awe of how these public servants keep on keeping on day after day while the system crumbles around them. I find that probably the most challenging thing. All that internal rage I feel, can’t be expressed in the many non-political roles and environments that I am in. It doesn't mean that I don’t feel it though. I just don’t right now have a place to express it in a way that actually leads to change. A place where all that energy can be used for positive momentum. I’ve plenty of people to hand wring with but I’m less and less minded. It feels less like connection and more like moaning for the sake of it. The horror of it all.

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I spent much more of the early part of 2023 volunteering and for various reasons I didn’t pick this up again. I feel the loss of this more keenly than I can describe and it’s something I am determined to pick up and make happen again in 2024. At the end of the day that’s what I see part of the point of being here is. To make things better for other people. In whatever way that is possible.

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I got much better at looking after myself this year but it took me quite a while to cotton on that the boom boom bust cycle I was in wasn’t working. Shaming myself internally for being a coach working with midlife women, many of whom were in the cul de sac of burnout, while doing ALL the same old things that left me utterly depleted and desperate for a break every few months is no way to be. No way to live.

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This crystallised itself with a knee injury that arrived in July during a particularly enthusiastic game of netball and didn’t leave. It took me a couple of impaired holidays, a music festival and dreading going back to a day of facilitating to realise that perhaps what I had tried wasn’t really helping. I had to get real that ignoring, shouting, shaming my knee wasn’t what it needed. After an MRI to check out that I hadn’t done something that needed surgery, I am on top of the pain, have packed away the walking stick and am finding a softer, kinder and above all SLOWER way back.

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Which is the pattern that has emerged in this latter part of the year. Slowness. It started some nearly 52 years ago and hasn’t stopped. The it being that endless running, striving to make this happen, crack on energy that by god has served me so well but has become a bit of an overdialled strength. It needs dialling down, more than that it needs to be noticed when the default has kicked in. Again. Some thought given to whether this is actually what is needed right now. I have helped this along with a new found love of swimming, some reflexology, qigong, some physio and will help it along in the new year with some slow movement exercise classes and gentle yoga. All the things that I would normally run a country mile away from, I am investigating, exploring and leaning into. The old ways, old energy ways, are not what is needed right now. A shit tonne of therapy, coaching and physio have helped me realise this. Kicking and screaming at times.

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So, I end with a single thought. A single word. One that has haunted me these last few months and is the most unlikely thing I ever thought I would say. My word for 2024 is Ease.

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I’m going to be easy on myself. Easier. I am going to think about what creates ease.

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Wishing you all the ease you can find for yourself, whether that be easing out of this year, or easing into the next.

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With love x