Ever wondered what resilience coaching is like and how it can help? Here is an account of the experience from the perspective of one of my clients, Astrid Verstraete. It’s a tale of working together with a coach, reflecting, learning, connecting with what is important and bringing about really positive change. (Many thanks to Astrid, for kindly writing and sharing this).
“I had the pleasure of [taking] four [one-to-one coaching sessions] with Anise. It’s strange because, throughout the conversations we’ve had, I feel like much more time has passed. It was pretty intense.
I was mainly interested in the topic because I’d started reading a book about resilience. It’d been two years of not feeling great, and I had finally pinned resilience down as the thing that was going to help me. I’m not that naive that I don’t think there are other things to work on, but I would already feel a huge relief if the little things in a day wouldn’t affect me as much. I wanted to understand why they affected me and how I could change my perception of this.
The journey I took with Anise was a fascinating one. I was tired of adapting to others. I would over-analyse situations. For example, why did it annoy me that a colleague seemed to be competitive with me? I’d go into it, journal about it, and decide that it’s because I’m competitive and I should stop those feelings to improve our working relationship.
The problem was that it made me feel emotionally drained. I almost held it against everyone else, that they made me have to adapt, while they were blissfully unaware.
I needed a fresh perspective and not a therapy one. Something else entirely. The work we did, the assumptions made in the first session got revised in the second. A 45-minute talk made me think about it all for a whole week. By the time we got to the next meeting, and we discussed the same questions, I had gained clarity.
And now, I’ve found something to work on that makes me feel lighter, better and still authentically myself. I don’t need to change, I don’t need to be mean to people, I can remain friendly, but now I can do that with boundaries in place.
My journey and assumptions went from identifying the people that gave me energy, that I could be fully myself with and reaching out to them more often. Then thinking I’ve been too serious over the last two years because I’d been feeling down, my life had been monotonous, maybe some mindless fun would help that. How could I get more of this? But the more I explored all of these, the more I realised that’s not the lid that fits on the problem jar. Boundaries and authenticity, celebrating my uniqueness and not always trying to adapt myself to the situation, those have been my saviours. And Anise got me there; I cannot be grateful enough.
I’m amazed at how much I’ve been able to learn about myself in those four sessions. It’s given me so much more power to continue on my path. Not aimlessly following others. I’ve started tuning out the voices that I don’t agree with, but equally, I’m tuning into the voices that are more likeminded to mine.
However, I will need to keep resilience coaching as a regular routine now. If I want to keep going on a journey with increased resilience, I need to keep checking in.”
Anise is an experienced coach specialising in resilience and walking techniques. She can often be found wandering and working in London parks.
Get in touch to find out more about resilience coaching.