Kindness Method
I am currently working through a book called "the Kindness Method" with the help of a friend. This is an incredible book! Shahroo Izadi takes ideas, which in hindsight seem really simple and obvious, but which are so heavily neglected in so much Life Coaching.
Her work includes exercises to help the individual remember the attitude that fuels their desire to achieve change. Exercises in her book, help the client maintain awareness of what they have already achieved. They finally have loosely structured ways to remember what helped them achieve their goals and what derailed their efforts so they make sure they are planted in the most fertilized soil to achieve the growth that they want. Now, when you're trying to achieve your goals you can make sure your life is helping you and not hindering you. Your life can be turned into a vehicle for driving that self-improvement. This is similar to the work I did with the
Suddenly, a Life Coaching session is relevant again!!! I can't express enough how disappointed I was during previous Life Coaching sessions, where my plans for my life and goals were ignored and I was led to discuss different things that weren't relevant to what I wanted to achieve in my life because the Life Coach was trying to fit it in with their system, for example: NLP, Jungian Archtypes or, in one case, the Psycho-Analysis of Freud.
My friend and I, have been working very deeply on our snapshot letters and maps. I am shock with how deep it has allowed us to go. In the words of Blanche from Golden Girls "I am stunned. I. AM. STUNNED. 'Stunned' is the only way to describe how stunned I am" with the sheer amount of hell we humans can put ourselves through. So embarrassed about our failures, we hide them from other people and then we do not have the support we need to actually do something about it. We force ourselves to bare this load alone. Why would we hurt ourselves and our chances at recovery by doing this? How horrible we are! And who is the victim? Ourselves!
I have to say I am so proud of my map of things I am proud of. I feel like I have been working on this for 11 years since my initial CBT work as a client. I won't share it here, it's kind of private, but I am so proud of it. Maybe if I feel it's worth it at some point I might make a public one but, this very blog is a small homage to creating a list of successes to encourage myself. I was deliberately doing for years before I got Shahroo's sexy light blue book.
Shahroo Izadi has her readers paying attention to the things that help them achieve and see what screws you over. In my own coaching, I tend to address the issues that prevented us after the fact so setting it up at the beginning is a novel idea! Imagine a type of coaching that is
Did you find this book interesting but reading is difficult for you? Trust me this book is easy to get through. Short to the point chapters. I also got the audible book because, I even as a gay man, I love a woman with a beautiful London accent and her confident air really adds to the experience. I don't get any more from making any of these referals, I just think this is a great book and I want more people to get benefit from it!
Working through this book with a friend and having her do the exercises really lit a fire under me for Life Coaching again. I want to jump back into the saddle, which I was interested in from 2017, but needed to focus on my programming career because that was needed if I was ever going to have any chance of moving to London in positive position and afford some sort of mortgage to hopefully sort out potential retirement wealth before I run out of time. Maybe I could use it to make some more money to help me pay off my new bathroom and save money to repair the kitchen. It would be great to use my Civil Service Coaching training, my CBT training, keep developing my Hypnosis skills and NLP skills. I could even offer Tarot reading sessions and Witchy training to support people whose goals align more with that and would benefit from what I can teach them.
At present, I only use these skills in my job and with certain friends, but if I could supplement my income to help me clear my credit cards, do some of the work on the house I want to do and pay back my folks for the money they loaned me to pay the deposit.
Graeme