Coaching Through Transitions

Being a life coach is such a gift and it has allowed me to make so many positive changes in my life. Chief among them, is the ability to manage and organize myself around transitions that occur in my life. Strategies around change and how to manage them effectively is the gift that my education has granted me. I am now pleased to be able to offer my services to anyone who needs a coach to help with the brainstorming around solutions, the organization around roles and responsibilities, and the re-framing of challenges into manageable goals. We all need to remember that we in fact act on life also when life decides to act on us. We have a symbiotic partnership with everything around us. The one area that we can control is the effect that change has in our lives by how we respond to it. I choose to respond with an open mind and hands ready for action!

Blessings!

Nicolina Cahouette
Life and Relationship Coach
ncahouette@gmail.com

What I've Learned about Relationships from my Work w/ Divorces: Part 1

I typically believe that the best way to learn anything is to look at successful models. However, a lot can be discovered in the depths of despair, as well as in those handlings of amicable couples who really want to work together.

Let's start w/ a moment of reflection on Carl Jung's profound statement: "Nothing effects the life of a child so much as the unlived life of its parents."

Wow! If that doesn't inform people of the damage done to kids who watch their parents idly stand by and "try" to make a relationship work, I don't know what does.

So, what have I learned about relationships?

1. Values Alignment: Partners must start out with the same values. If you think it's exciting to have philosopical differences about how to live life,then be that person's friend. Don't let the initial excitement of something new drive you in to a relationship.
2. Relationships are work: there's no way around it. But the work should be fun and something to look forward to. Hearing about my partner's new ideas and dreams, listening intently to what he needs from me to strengthen our relationship, discussing past baggage that gets in the way of NOW! There's no bigger destroyer of relationships than accumulated baggage with no landfill big enough to fit it all.
3. Action after a Complaint: If you spend more time complaining about your spouse to others then you are not keeping your relationship in an intimate and respectful light w/ your spouse. A little complaining w/ others who can hold you accountable to action is more than okay. But, complaining w/out action only reinforces the problem at hand.

More to come...Part 2 of Lessons Gleaned through Divorce Work about what makes Relationships Tick!

Becky Shook-Wotzka
To new beginnings through old ways of being.