Ever since I was a little girl, I was told various quotes and philosophies regarding happiness. Most of the time, being convinced that happiness is an ultimate state or goal, fantasy or achievement… quoting Beyoncé in her song “Pretty Hurts”:

[Intro: Harvey Keitel & Beyoncé]

Ms. Third Ward, your first question: What is your aspiration in life?

Oh, well, my aspiration in life would be… to be happy!

How do you handle Conflicts? I believe that the way one handles conflict is a lot due to one’s upbringing and personality. I also believe that my generation was mostly brought up with “conflict avoidance” – because conflict was something bad and one had to avoid it as much as possible. But what our parents failed to tell us, is that conflict can’t be avoided. Conflict has existed since the beginning of mankind and the best way to handle it, is to confront it, not avoid it. There’s a lot of content regarding conflict at the workplace, definitely a trending topic, but in my opinion, it’s important to also address conflict in your personal life, with your partner or friends and especially family members.

Do Your Thoughts Define You?

I came across a quote from Eckhardt Tolle’s book The Power of Now, which prompted me to analyze our thoughts in today’s post:

“The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly — you usually don’t use it at all. It uses you. This is the disease. You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. The instrument has taken you over.”

As Coaching gained popularity over the years, so have different Coaching methods and models. Today I would like to talk about one of the most popular ones: the GROW Model. It’s a coaching framework used in conversations, meetings and everyday leadership to unlock potential and possibilities. GROW was created by Sir John Whitmore and colleagues in the late 1980s. It has since become the world’s most popular coaching model for problem solving, goal setting and performance improvement.

Does time really heal all wounds? Let me start by saying right away, no! It doesn’t! Like all wounds, when left uncared for, it can be infected, it can get worse over time, if not take care of!

In times of uncertainties all you can do is… sing!

I used to have a framed card hanging in my bathroom when I was a student at the law faculty. It was a Samuel Beckett quote that said: “When you're in the shit up to your neck, there's nothing left to do but sing.”

When you’ve been brought up in a “love for merit” environment, it’s easy for someone to become an overachiever, a type-a as they call it, but before labeling and judging people, I always try to figure out the “why and the how come” behind it. Something I’ve learned over the years and have learned to accept and eventually live by, is that our mistakes, our f***ups, don’t define us. We are not our mistakes. We are not our f***ups. We’re all human and we all eventually will make them. But when you’re brought up in a household where you’re held up to impossible standards and love is something they manipulate you and blackmail you with, well then, it’s only normal to want to excel, to never f***up, to never make a mistake and to be adamant when you do!

People often ask me: “what is a coach actually?” Like they know what a tennis or sports coach is, so after I tell them that I’m not a sports coach, they look at me with a big question mark on their forehead.

So, I want to take this opportunity of this blog post and tell you what I do for a living and what prompted me to become a coach.

Nowadays, coaching is defined as a conversational process, between a coach and his client, with the purpose that the client can move to a desired situation and outcome. The latter must have an objective that he wants to achieve, something that worries him, something that anguishes him or something that blocks him and so he seeks the help of a coach to accompany him in this process, define new options, transform his state of mind, identify your limiting beliefs and move forward. Coaching is a process of growth, personal and professional development that must be started voluntarily.

More and more clients approach me as a coach, because they want to learn how to set “healthy” boundaries. I air-quote healthy, because I feel like it’s worth an analysis.

The imposter syndrome is defined as s a psychological occurrence in which an individual doubts their skills, talents, or accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud. It’s a phenomenon in which people doubt their own education, competence, skill, talents, accomplishments, and knowledge. As a result, they feel less competent than how they are perceived by other people.

So, one thing is being criticized by other people or criticizing others, but how do you deal when you criticize yourself?

As a coach, I’ve caught myself finding it difficult to be taken seriously. I always tend to emphasize that I’m first and foremost a lawyer and an economist. So, I asked myself: why is that?

Well, mostly I believe, because coaching is relatively new and has become very trendy. So, the expression goes: well, everyone’s a coach nowadays. But in order to understand the trend, let’s analyze its history.

Funny how those days between Christmas and New Year’s make you feel like you’re stuck in a limbo, a twilight zone, where everything is permitted and it’s like no one judges you.

What happens after you build rapport in your first coaching session. What seemed to be a work issue, turned out to be a boundary issue.