How to fail your way to success in 2020

In my latest professional newsletter I've highlighted in bold a few of the motivational messages I embed in guided visualisations which may prove useful for your clients, especially at this time of year. 

As the Christmas decorations begin to come down, you may have noticed it's not just the start of a new year but the beginning of a whole new decade. With a positive and focused mindset, the possibilities for the next ten years are absolutely endless.

Any year with a zero at the end feels like a bit of a mile stone, so the start of this New Year in particular is also a good time to take stock of how just far you have travelled.

Three decades 

Thirty years ago, I found myself immersed in what turned out to be a life threatening episode of post natal depression.

Walking alone in the grounds of a mental health unit, I remember looking up at the sky, firing out an angry question to the passing clouds:  ‘How the **** did this happen to me?’ 

I was to spend the next decade discovering the answer.

Two decades 

Twenty years ago, prompted by my own experience of a flawed mental helath system, I was in the process of studying not one, but two mental health diploma courses. The first was based on traditional reflective counselling and the second on a more proactive coaching approach. The juxtaposition of two such opposing paradigms (the tutors of which all felt their model was the best) threw up the kind of cognitive dissonance that generated both personal and professional anxiety and made me ask some uncomfortable questions about the whole nature of mental health training.

What, I wondered, was the very best way to help people feel both supported and heard yet still help them focus on their goals moving forward? Where did counselling stop and coaching begin and, more importantly, where were the overlaps? 

One decade

Ten years ago, having by then developed a fully integrated approach that achieved consistently positive outcomes, I gave up my established private practice to focus on founding the Therapeutic Coaching charity, Reclaim Life. Referrals I had previously taken from my colleague, Dr Smith, I now diverted to the volunteers I trained in the coach-counselling paradigm which had evolved organically from thousands of hours of my own client work. It would later become known as the Fusion Model.

Now

Since then my professional journey has been full-on to say the least. There have been great successes along the way, but there have definitely been some spectacular failures and errors of judgement too. 

‘Jump first and knit your parachute on the way down’ became a very useful mantra when founding the Integrated Coaching Academy. The first time I ran the Therapeutic Coaching Diploma I was still writing the full programme, responding to the immediate needs of learners along the way.

'Better do something imperfectly than nothing flawlessly' also proved helpful for me... and for a few of my clients too; like Joan, who described herself as 'a perfectionist'. 

Joan

‘Perfect’ was actually a very appropriate word for Joan.

She presented as perfectly groomed and perfectly poised. Joan had done very well at school, encouraged by her highly aspirational parents to succeed. She was always top of the class and, when it was time to establish a career, Joan moved seamlessly through the ranks and became very well respected in her field. 

However, she now felt highly anxious most of the time and felt totally confined by her own perfectionism. She found, in fact, that she was doing less and less and was unwilling to take any risks or try anything new for fear of the shame of a possible failure. On the first session I recommended to her one of my absolute favourite books ‘Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway.’

Joan was nothing if not bright. She got the embedded message straight away, simply from reading the title :)

It’s so easy to be frozen by fear of failure. It is also easy to fall into the trap that we must be perfect at everything we do for fear of letting ourselves or other people down. But when you put fear of failure to one side and assume that mistakes will happen, the old NLP concept of ‘no failure only feedback’ becomes the perfect reframe. 

The next ten years

In seeking to develop and expand the whole integrated coach-counselling Fusion concept , I realised mistakes would inevitably be made along the way. Those mistakes, however, would always be opportunities for learning and growth and a way of discovering how not to do it, much like Edison did when he developed the lightbulb filament.

Asked by the New York Times how it felt to have two thousand failed experiments under his belt, his response was 'I have not failed. I have simply discovered two thousand ways not to do it!'

A further two thousand 'failures' eventually resulted in success.

I will no doubt have many of my own failures over the next ten years….and they will be truly welcomed, because it’s only when we dare to fail greatly that we can ever hope to achieve greatly.

In 2020 I hope you also get plenty of opportunities to fail your way to success...

Diploma 2020 and Distance Leaner Skills Certificate accredited by NCFE

We are enrolling now for the 2020 Diploma programme at Chalgrave Hall, Tebworth, Bedfordshire, just 5 minutes from M1 junction 12. The Diploma will run over two weekends in 2020. Early booking is recommended as numbers will be restricted 

July: Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th

September: Friday 25th-Sunday 27th inclusive

Diploma fee: ￡1,395 after deduction of the ￡100 early booking discount

Get your application form here

What is covered in the programme?

The 70,000 word, 426 page work book provided as part of both programmes covers a broad range of theory and skills.

Module 1

The Therapeutic Coaching Timeline

Professional evolution

The Therapeutic Coach: A new paradigm

The big experiment

What is therapeutic coaching? Is it different from counselling?  

About the NCFE accredited Therapeutic Coaching Diploma

Effective Therapy: Affordable training

Module 2

Work Book

Zen philosophy; an auspicious beginning

Setting SMART Goals

Self Reflection

Learning something new

Recognising emotions

Module 3

Communication Micros Skills

S.O.L.E.R

Listen

Mirroring and reflection

Paraphrasing

Summarising

Open questions

Empathy

Carl Roger’s core conditions

About Carl Rogers

Look back, but don’t stare

Module 4

Human needs

Create a SAFE SPACE to get your emotional needs met:

The work life balance

Attunement and the therapeutic alliance

Accelerated rapport

Smile

Information Gathering: Using Clinical Measures and feedback

CORE 10

Taking an emotional needs ‘audit’

Actualising tendency versus learned helplessness

How to restoring hope

Module 5

A first session with a client

Placebo-nocebo

Confidentiality in therapeutic work

Positive expectation

SUDS scaling

Module 6

Dealing with anxiety and panic attacks

Fight or flight

Pattern matching

Thinking errors or cognitive distortions

Resilience and Base Stress

Diaphragmatic Breathing

The Observing Self and Meta awareness

Misuse of the Imagination

What else do I need to know?

Module 7

Setting therapeutic goals

The Magic Question

The Reticular Activating System (RAS)

RAS and focused attention

What are your Hobbies and Interests?

Developing metaphor therapeutically

Module 8

Psycho Education

Triune theory

Sleep

Pattern matching and neural pathways

Patterns of response

Module 9

Supervision and the helping professions

Referrals

Diversity: Celebrating Difference, Celebrating ‘Sameness’

Challenging the labels

HAPPINESSISNOWHERE

Module 10

STOP: GO Bridging the gap between counselling and coaching

Holistic Life Coaching

Ploughing new furrows: Counselling in a coaching context

Where are you on the wellbeing continuum?

React or respond?

Thought stopping

Neuroplasticity and the changing brain

Affirmations

Module 11

The STOP System

STOP and diaphragmatic breathing: How to test your own breathing

STOP and ‘Taking a Step Back’

STOP and the Observing Self

STOP and Emotional intelligence

STOP and interrupting old or habitual patterns

Module 12

The Wheel of Life

Case study: Geoff #1

Using the coaching wheel of life

Assessing and scaling life as it is

The life wheel protocol

Module 13

Case study: Geoff #2

Wheel of life doc 1

A holistic view of the client

The preferred future

Story: What a bird should look like

Write it down-make it happen

Module 14

Case study: Geoff #3

Wheel of life doc 2

SMART goals

Case study: Geoff #4

SMART goals doc

Module 15

Visualisation

Describing guided imagery

Visualisation: a history

Meditation and mindfulness

Metaphor in guided imagery

Module 16

Case study: Geoff #5

Therapeutic time travel

From problem focused to solution focused

A progressive relaxation and bespoke visualisation for Geoff

Conclusion

Intelligence plus intuition equals ‘whole brain’ learning

The Ebbinghaus Curve of Forgetting

A privilege

Appendix

TASK documents

Therapeutic stories

Resources

Therapeutic Coaching in practice

First session questionnaire

SAFE SPACE audit sheet

CORE 10 questions

Case study: Shelly

Case Study: David; coaching a client with M.E.

BACP ethical guidelines

Association for Coaching: coaching competencies

Articles Is the Therapeutic Coach a ‘brain mechanic?’

What do you do if you don't like your client?

Smile and the world smiles back.

The Top Five Regrets of the Dying

Swim towards the light.

A Nice Result

Better to do something imperfectly than nothing flawlessly

No need for my services?

The Super Organising Idea

All boxed up?

Working at the cutting edge

Epigenetics

Mapping the connectome

The gut microbiome

Polyvagal theory

The seven pillars of mindfulness

Mental health first aid

About the Therapeutic Coaching Diploma programme

Bibliography

The daffodil principle

Order your workbook here