Incremental

One of the best things I did this year was to buy myself 10 sessions with a fitness instructor. And then another 10….

At first all I thought about after each weekly one hour session was how unfit I was. I felt sceptical that one hour a week could change anything much. The encouragement of Greg Bell, my instructor, was invaluable – also his judgment and experience. He created sessions that were challenging to just the right level – enough for me to think ‘god damn it I want to be fitter than THIS’ but not to the point that I wanted to pack it all in.

The goal that sparked this had been to run in my local ‘Race for Life’, involve some local friends and have fun doing it. Not much to ask.

The end to this story is a happy one – the goal was well and truly fulfilled, money was raised for Cancer Research and I was amazed to discover that I had morphed from a person who got out of breath after running 100 meters to one who made it round the 5k course in 40 minutes and wants to do it again next year (and faster).

I am full of wonder at how real; tangible, wonderful progress can often be incremental. We are just past the shortest day and will, at first, hardly notice the couple of minutes of extra daylight that come our way each day. But they are here and they are real and building up to something brilliant.

Keeping up my professional development: part 2

Hi

We would like to congratulate two members of the RCS UK community of coaches who have been elected to the UK International Coach Federation board of directors.

Those of you who know Caroline Sullivan and Ray Lamb will know just what a powerful contribution they will make both to the ICF in the UK, as it moves towards running the first global ICF conference in the UK, and to the coaching profession.

We wish both of you every success and thank you for being willing to make this contribution of time and effort on behalf of coaching.

Kind regards

Richard Bentley and Christopher Samsa
Directors
RCS UK
Results Coaching Systems (Europe)

Telephone +44 (0)845 456 3493

http://www.resultscoaches.com
http://www.workplacecoaching.com

Keeping up my professional development: part 1

Part of my development as a coach is to receive coaching. I was lucky enough last year to find Barbara Frodsham, coach extraordinaire, through the ReciproCoach network.

Having Barbara as my coach was a wonderful experience. With knowledge and great skill, deftly combined with humour and perception, she created a space in which I could think clearly, gain new perspectives and take action. Some deep seated self doubt dissolved through the process and life running my business, which had been feeling a bit scary, got much better. This year, thanks to Barbara's encouragement and my up graded self belief, I applied for a UK board position for the coaching body the International Coach Federation. Me: ‘I can’t do that…’ , B: ‘yes you can…’

I’ll let you know how that turned out in my next blog…

Find out more about Barbara’s work at www.momentouscoaching.com

Also referenced here:www.reciprocoach.com; http://www.coachfederation.org.uk/

Refreshed

Holidays are wonderful things: I have come back from a trip to South Africa refreshed and raring to go. This means at last, a new blog entry and also a new professional bio - see caroline page for more. Happy Fireworks.

Barak Obama – my two penneth

Taking responsibility for our futures and joining together to make things better.

That’s the simple message I take from Obama’s inaugural speech. He seemed to be saying – times are tough, it’s of our own making and within our powers to make it right again. Times have been good and we have the hard work and dedication of our forebears to thank for that. We need to remember that it will take hard work and dedication to make things better again now.

I am too young to remember WWII but listening to the speech certainly evoked the spirit of lets be brave, lets be adult and lets all pull together to get through these difficulties. I might not buy it all, politics is after all about as reliable as quicksand, but I do buy that message and have pulled up my metaphorical socks accordingly. I see this year as one of adulthood, optimism and resilience.

The other thing that struck me about the ceremony was the everlasting power of poetry: to inspire, move or simply to provoke and annoy judging from some forum postings. Interest in, and love for, literature sometimes seems to be on the wane in a fast-entertainment-driven culture. But for me, to see a poet take centre stage and pass on what was, to me, the most important message of the day ‘what if the mightiest word is love?’ was touching. There is it seems a place for poetry and for love in this troubled world, I am thankful for that.

All change

Welcome to my new look website. Over the coming months I will add more pages and news updates as well as creating some blog topics for discussion. Please come back soon.