Episode 5: Your awesome life: EVEN AWESOMER!

If you ever thought coaching was a tool to fix a problem - you're right, and that's not all it's about. If your life is great and you want to make it awesome, coaching could be for you, too.

In this episode we invite Ilinca Manu, ACC (associate certified coach) to the podcast to coach Lisa DiMatteo, PCC (professional certified coach) on the topic of making an awesome life 'awesomer.'  

This conversation is about:

• Creating a solid plan to ensure completion of a project
• Raising the bar on a goal already in progress
• Recognizing a "non-supportive" habit pattern & working around it

You will hear how the coach in this episode helps the client unlock a custom designed solution. She does this by asking open-ended questions, reflecting what the coach is hearing & sensing, and while being a creative thought partner, not being attached to  her own ideas of what is happening.

You'll also hear the coach & the client debrief the session. And your hosts, Lisa D & Vimla will talk about why a session like this is helpful in reaching goals, changing habits, working with 'what is', and creating a more awesome life.

If you'd like to connect with us or even be a guest on our podcast (coaching!) please visit our website.

If you would like to sample coaching for yourSelf, CONTACT US.

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Transcript

Vimla | 00:00

Hello and welcome to Coaching Confidential, hosted by Vimla and Lisa D; we are ICF certified professional coaches. If you haven't heard us before, this is a podcast that brings you inside a coaching session. You can be a fly on the wall and listen to an unscripted coaching session. In today's episode, our coach friend, Iliaca coaches Lisa, and the topic is how to make an awesome life awesomer. Towards the beginning of the episode, Ilinca introduces herself, Lisa and Ilinca have a conversation about what is coaching, and Ilinca also shares the impact of coaching on her life. We invite you to listen to the end. During the debrief, Lisa and I talk about the formula of how to make an awesome life awesomer, happy listening.

Lisa | 00:54

So welcome to the Coaching Confidential podcast, Ilinca Manu.

Ilinca | 00:59

Hi. So lovely to be here.

Lisa | 01:02

It's great to have you. Alinka is based in, you could ask Romania, Ilinca, and I know each other from a coaching course we did earlier this year together from

Ilinca | 01:19

Coaching Emotions.

Lisa | 01:21

Yes, Dan Newbie. We're gonna give a shout out to Dan Newbie's, a motion centered coaching course. That was a really awesome, um, body of work to dive into. And ever since we met online and I have been, uh, trading, peer coaching and we've decided to record one of our sessions together and share it with you. Anything you wanna say, Ilinca about who you be in the world and kind of how you think about coaching before we jump into the coaching?

Ilinca | 01:57

Sure, of course. So I started coaching three or four years ago, and currently I am ICF accredited with the acc. And I'm doing coaching as a hobby and a passion that I have. So I'm currently employed in the IT industry. So for me, doing coaching is, um, having the opportunity to meet new people and to see how challenging other people's lives are and actually to bring some value, somatic value to, to the coaching process. Coaching should not necessarily be about addressing some challenges or some problems should actually be about creating more space for opportunities for potential development and new idea that might arise. So basically for me, somebody who wants to get coaching sessions should be also somebody who not necessarily has any challenges in his or her life, but has some good, let's say, I don't know, some wonderful projects that they want to improve or some wonderful idea that they want to expand, you know, put coaching in the service of others, something like this.

Lisa | 03:14

Yeah, let me come back to what you just said because I found that to be a really beautiful angle on coaching that I think, um, is underappreciated. There doesn't need to be anything wrong to receive coaching. In fact, life can be awesome and coaching can help you uncover making it awesome or

Ilinca | 03:38

Yeah, exactly. You nailed it. What else would you like to know about me before we start

Lisa | 03:44

In the coaching that you've received? So as being the client, I guess as a coachee, what's one of the more powerful shifts that you've experienced or things that you've taken from being a client?

Ilinca | 03:57

First I experienced how it is to build trust from the other side of the story and to really, really understand what being open to explore new ideas. New perspectives means best lessons learned, let's say, was to really get new ideas and new solutions to some situations that I was so drawn into that I wasn't seeing, you know, any other side of the picture, any other side of the story. So, uh, it's wonderful when you actually see how it works on you as well.

Lisa | 04:36

Yeah,

Ilinca | 04:37

Yeah. No, because then you really do believe when the client is saying, yeah, you really helped me that much. You know, he's not being polite. He's just saying, yeah, you're really helped in being there as a thinking partner, you know, uh, for being there on during the process and putting the process inside. And because we all know the results are on the client side, it's not our result as a coach, it's just being there and how can we serve them, let's

Lisa | 05:05

Say. Yeah. Yeah. So there's something about being solid and knowing the process works, trusting the process. Yeah. Yeah. And is there one thing in your life now that's different because you have this,

Ilinca | 05:22

That's a very good question, <laugh> mm-hmm. <affirmative>, which I would like to think about a little bit.

Lisa | 05:28

Yeah. Would you like that as an inquiry? And then maybe we can come back to it.

Ilinca | 05:34

No, I think I was, uh, thinking that, uh, the most important thing that I took out of, uh, this was actually one of the good sides effect of being a certified coach, is that you embody this in you and you won't be able to be different, not even in your other aspects of your life. So I surprise myself when I'm at the job, at my job, at current job and I'm like, okay, I'm seeing this as a coaching process or act, you know, act and ask the questions that we usually have in like following the process. And this helped me a lot in interacting with people all around me and also making me more aware about how I say things, how I react. You know, somehow it woke me up <laugh> in a good way.

Lisa | 06:29

Yeah. Yeah. That's beautiful. It sounds like in both your personal and your professional relationship. Yeah.

Ilinca | 06:36

It's something that you don't actually, you're not able to, you know, have a fine, you have a fine line with, but you don't know exactly how it's shifting, you know, or what it is. So yeah, it's, uh, an add on that, uh, I'm really grateful for and I wasn't expecting that actually. That was a good surprise.

Lisa | 06:53

<laugh>. Yeah. Beautiful. Beautiful. I love it. It it coaching impacts the whole of your human

Ilinca | 07:03

If you let it Yeah. <laugh>.

Lisa | 07:05

Yeah.

Ilinca | 07:05

And if you're willing to accept that actually.

Lisa | 07:08

Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Good point. Is there anything else you would like to make sure that people know about you?

Ilinca | 07:15

Sharing this experience from different cultures and different countries and different frames of working coaching in US is totally different at coaching in Romania, at least how I feel it. And it's something that you can see actually, and people can see that there are different coaching styles and there are different coaching approaches and how the process is laid out in different areas of this world. I would invite people to see, maybe to see this and maybe to notice this during our session.

Lisa | 07:52

Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. I love that, that cross-cultural take on coaching.

Ilinca | 07:58

Yeah.

Lisa | 07:59

We're gonna leave it to the listeners to discover that for themselves.

Ilinca | 08:03

Yeah, exactly. <laugh>.

Lisa | 08:05

All right. Excellent. So, um, let's transition into the coaching and we're gonna have a short session

Ilinca | 08:12

Speed coaching, cuz I like to say it, you know, it's not like speed dating, but it's speed coaching. Let's try to do that.

Lisa | 08:19

Yeah. Okay. My topic is this theme of taking something that's awesome and making it awesomer

Ilinca | 08:25

Awesomer. I like that.

Lisa | 08:26

Yeah. I'm just gonna acknowledge that that's not perfect English, but that's what I love about it. So I have recently shifted my, my movement practice, my yoga practice. I've practiced yoga pretty consistently several times a week for the past five or six years. And my preference has been for a more yin or restorative style yoga, a slower yoga. And I haven't really enjoyed the more active viya, um, yoga that really is more, more athletic. Anyways. I have recently been moving into more active yoga and I'm really feeling that it's right for this time for me. And the opportunity here for me is to really keep going with it. I'm in a, a yoga program with a teacher that I've never worked with before and it goes for another seven weeks or so, and I'm really good at getting into things and being super excited about them in the beginning and having it be sort of a thing that trails off like my voice <laugh>, um, you know,

Ilinca | 09:45

It fades off if I'm understanding correctly. Something that you're really excited about, you're like, whoa. And then something fades off, am I hearing right?

Lisa | 09:55

Yeah. And I really wanna stay super present with it for the whole time because I feel like there's a real huge opportunity here for me and I, I wanna see what staying with it the whole time brings. So that's my topic. I wanna think about how I can stay with it.

Ilinca | 10:15

Okay. So what would be a valuable outcome for you to have for our session today? You stated beautifully the topic. I understood that speaking about yoga, you have this type of being very exciting at the beginning and then somehow something's lost on their way and this fading away. Is that correct?

Lisa | 10:41

Yep.

Ilinca | 10:42

Okay. So what would be, um, the outcome you would be happy with at the end of our session?

Lisa | 10:50

At the end of our very brief time, I would love to feel super excited about staying with this for the additional seven weeks. I would like to feel confident that I will and maybe have a, a tool or two to support that. So like if I went off track, a way of creating spaciousness about going off track, but also a way to come back onto track.

Ilinca | 11:21

Okay. You just, from what I'm hearing, you just mentioned your success measures basically. So would it be anything else to add in order for you to know how you succeeded in being excited and confident and to have this at the end of the session?

Lisa | 11:41

No, I think those are good. I'll just say this, I know that at some point I could get hijacked by the inner critic and let's say I fall off track, my inner critic can make me wrong and then, you know, the toilet flushes and I just give up <laugh> and I guess I wanna be able to recognize the inner critic and be like, okay, yep. And then flush the toilet on the critic, not the project, not what I want to do. Okay. So the measurement would be that I can hear the critic and still get back on track.

Ilinca | 12:18

Okay. I've heard some buzz words, like mm-hmm <affirmative> being present and exciting and confident. And how are you in compared to this outcome that you would like to have, how do you feel right now about that?

Lisa | 12:39

Ah, meaning where am I today in relationship to those?

Ilinca | 12:43

Yes. In relationship with those desired outcomes.

Lisa | 12:47

Yeah, I feel pretty connected to them in this moment. Right. Obviously I'm bringing energy to them because I'm bringing them into our coaching space. So they have elevated themselves to a place of importance where I'm actually talking about it. So I feel very connected to them. But I am well aware that that connectedness can have some distance come, you know, a wedge of distance can come in between that, between now and seven weeks from now.

Ilinca | 13:22

Okay. So there's a space there basically from what you've shown me. So listeners won't see us, but somehow you raise your hands and you put on some space between now and what's my gonna happen in the next week. Is that true?

Lisa | 13:36

Yes.

Ilinca | 13:38

What's in their space? What's in that space?

Lisa | 13:41

Oh, okay. That's an awesome question. What's in the space is fear that I'm not going to stay with it. And so actually I'm recognizing the inner critic, I'm realizing is a buzzword. I love that you said that because people who are listening may not know what I mean by inner critic. So I'll just say it's the voice inside my head that says, girlfriend, you're not gonna stay with us. You'll go one more week and then you'll be by the pool reading magazines. Okay. I don't know who's pool and what magazine, so it's the fear that, that I'm not going to be able to manage that voice

Ilinca | 14:25

When you are saying that, I'm just imagining a small, tiny person who's on your shoulder and saying, you know, girlfriend, you're not gonna do that. If you would add somebody in that space with that little man, if you wanna go with this type of imagination exercise, what would you add there besides that fearful little man?

Lisa | 14:51

Yeah. Oh, I love metaphor. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So I'm gonna shoot metaphor just a little bit. It's not a little man on my shoulder, but it's like a, a obnoxious dragon Breathe fire case

Ilinca | 15:06

<laugh>. Wonderful. See, this is, this is how coaching, the coaching process works. I'm just throwing something in there and you are just adding it up and whatever it's suitable for you in the process. Okay. So our little man was form into a fearful dragon.

Lisa | 15:23

Yeah, well, dragon breathing fire and the fire is like, you know, all the, all the negative energy of how I'm not going to, not gonna get to the finish line the way I want to. So if I were to put something on my other shoulder to counterbalance the dragon, it would be a humongous bucket of water. <laugh>

Ilinca | 15:50

<laugh>. Good. What would you do with that?

Lisa | 15:53

Well, since we're in the fantastical here, the bucket of water would be held by like this really mystical, powerful angel woman.

Ilinca | 16:09

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>.

Lisa | 16:10

So angel woman meaning like the opposite energies of a dragon, at least how I see it. The dragon being dangerous and breathing fire and you know, something that you kind of wanna avoid. And the angel being soft and powerful and full of wisdom and she knows what to do with that bucket of water.

Ilinca | 16:33

How can she help you to go being confident and exciting and be present? How can she be of help?

Lisa | 16:46

Well, in my metaphor, I said she embodies this wisdom and so I suppose she can share with me her wisdom

Ilinca | 16:56

And if we would move a step forward, how would she do that?

Lisa | 17:04

Yeah. My immediate answer is, I don't know.

Ilinca | 17:10

And if you would know, what would that be?

Lisa | 17:13

If I were to know it would just be, it wouldn't really have a form. Right? Like I could make up a story like she whispers in my ear or you know, I meditate and she tells me things and you know, maybe it's just stuff I'm making up, but whatever I make up can be a message from her. It's, it's all made up, right? Even the critic, even the dragon. So the point is I just get quote unquote downloads. I just know I have messages coming into my consciousness that basically are the opposite of what the dragon is saying. Like the dragons like, yeah, yeah, girlfriend, go sit by the pool. You're not, you're not gonna do this anyways. And the the angel with the bucket of water is like, Lisa <laugh>, you totally can do this. I've seen you do harder, better, more amazing. Like you're powerful. You are doing this. So it's something like that.

Ilinca | 18:34

That sounds wonderful and I would like to acknowledge what you discovered and it's a wonderful picture. I'm a visual person, so if you allow me to just share that I, I've seen a very interesting and full of light picture when you described it. What would you do with this as a next step? Where would you take this in order for this to be of help for you to serve you?

Lisa | 19:04

Yeah, so knowing that I want, I think I said what I wanted was to feel motivated and excited and just exploring the mystical metaphor of all of this has done that for me. If I were to get off track, I wanna come back on track. That was the thing I said I wanted. Yeah. And I think I can use this metaphor as a way of doing that. And I'm a pretty creative person, so I can imagine a lot of ways of doing that. One might be like to draw a picture of this vision.

Ilinca | 19:44

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>

Lisa | 19:46

And or just find, you know, Google, Google images that represent what I'm talking about if I didn't feel like drawing and have them near me as a structure. Structure being like something I see to remind me of these two voices and the power in the voice of the bucket of water and the angel

Ilinca | 20:14

<laugh>. So if you will we take out main idea out of this session, what would it take with you after we finish this?

Lisa | 20:31

I don't know. I feel like I'm just normalizing the fact that, that there's a voice in us that kind of keeps us from getting to the finish line. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> when we know we can. And you know, there are ways that we can work with those voices to acknowledge that they happen, they're quite normal and that most of us are in them.

Ilinca | 21:00

Yeah.

Lisa | 21:01

<laugh> or embody them and that there's ways we can work with them to get where we wanna get to have the awesome, be awesome

Ilinca | 21:13

<laugh>. Yeah.

Lisa | 21:15

Thank you Alinka for the beautiful coaching today.

Ilinca | 21:18

Thank you as well.

Lisa | 21:19

Yeah. So our coaching session is complete.

Ilinca | 21:22

Yeah.

Lisa | 21:24

Alinka, what was alive for you in the session as the coach?

Ilinca | 21:29

Well, it's always extremely interesting to apply and shift from coaching the issue to coaching the person. And this somehow it's happening during the process when you start knowing your client and the client gets to know you. So this is a work in progress, but somehow I felt really connected to the process and being here with you when you starting sharing the image and what's your, your left shoulder, what's your right or I mean, you know, something that's really doing this creative process of exploring the opportunities. That was for me really interested to see. Yeah. I don't know how this looks to you. How, how was it for you actually,

Lisa | 22:16

It was really good and I'll share what's here now. What you just pointed out was really good for me. This piece of the metaphor and the shoulder piece. I know it is a coaching tool that we use

Ilinca | 22:29

Yeah. Is the metaphor. Metaphor. Yeah. But I wasn't planning on doing that. It just comes to me. I mean, when I was listening to you, and this is actually what's happening. I've seen it with the other clients when you are really listening to the client but not getting into very deep, you know, with his thoughts and topic of discussion, being there but not being in there. Then you get some flashbacks or something. And as you were speaking, I was just imagining exactly what I shared with you. And this is another issue that it's important in coaching. It's the way we do our direct communication is one of our competencies that's really soft and really important. Master, this is something that I, I like to use, but I know that we need to ask permission. I asked you if I can share what I've just seen with you and then also share my thoughts, but to understand and make it clear for me as a coach and for you as a client that these are my thoughts and you can take whatever it suits you and whatever resonates with you.

Ilinca | 23:35

And this was wonderful as a feedback because immediately you took whatever it was important and interesting for you. Like, you know, having somebody, a voice or whatever and you, you shared what it looks for you. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I mean I've seen it in different coaching session also that this can come back as a feedback. Now you know what, no, whatever, it's small chance that you won't take anything from that, you know, intuitive radio that came. But that was really interesting to see how this developed and what you took from my direct communication and what you did with it actually <laugh>.

Lisa | 24:16

Yeah. That's really important thing to point out. And the piece about you asking me made it really easy for me to go with it if there was energy there and to the point for some clients there won't be energy there and that's okay. That's not right, not wrong. We just knock on a different door.

Ilinca | 24:36

No, because we're not leading, we are just sharing our thoughts as coaches and see what, what you pick up as a client. Another issue that was the interesting, our listeners won't see, I saw you do this as a space. You raised your hands in your left. I literally saw on the camera some space and I was like, what's with that space there? What's, what's going on? This is mirroring. So that's another interesting aspect of coaching, which I really, really like. You know, mirroring back what what you see the way you see it and taking out the most important thing for you in the process.

Lisa | 25:15

Yeah. In that which you just said are two other sort of deeper things to point out. One is the levels of listening, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So your mirroring requires the ability to be able to listen at all the levels and um, it's listening beyond the words basically. Uh, listening not being said. Yeah. And so there's that. And then there's also this idea of not being attached. So you put this thing out there but you're not attached to it.

Ilinca | 25:48

You don't have any expectations related to that. Just put it there and see what's happening. Yeah. Yep. Can you look up with curiosity? And you do this as a exploration phase. Actually this is exploration phase. Yeah. And if nothing, you know, if the client doesn't pick it up, then it's not for them. And something else would be another thing that came up also during the session, which I really felt that was being present, this was also in your topic of discussion, but I really felt that like being present, you know,

Lisa | 26:21

To bring another point to what it was like for me as the client. I'll say that the vision that you brought in that I was able to make my own with the voices on the shoulders is really helpful for me because the piece I took away was creative. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I can create an image that serves as a reminder for me throughout these seven weeks that I can shift my attention or my ear to one shoulder or the other. <laugh> and <laugh>. And honestly I think this is probably true for others, is definitely true for me. That being able to bring my creative self and my creative energy to something I'm up to. It's sort of like the kryptonite.

Vimla | 27:12

Yeah.

Lisa | 27:13

<laugh>. You know, like it defeats the critic. It's the critic has a hard time living for me in when there's creative energy around.

Vimla | 27:20

True.

Lisa | 27:24

We're debriefing this episode several weeks down the road. So I'm curious Fmla about what you heard when you listened to this coaching session.

Vimla | 27:35

Hmm. Let me begin by saying that, that was a very powerful coaching session and I'm super impressed how aware you are of your habit patterns. Not only do you recognize them, you also brought one of them to your coach for exploration. That requires a lot of courage. You are proactively exploring your critic and you're familiar with your critic. So you know when it might potentially show up and you created a response to that critic, the angel, so that the angel shows up when the critic shows up. That's just brilliant.

Lisa | 28:15

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. When we're changing habits, i e making new habits, we can run into challenges doing that.

Vimla | 28:27

Yeah, absolutely.

Lisa | 28:30

And one challenge that we know about is the thing that typically takes you out. And so since we know that those things are gonna happen, how can we create a plan to be when that inevitability does happen?

Vimla | 28:54

Yeah. When I was listening to the coaching session, I was hearing some of that.

Lisa | 29:01

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>,

Vimla | 29:03

The takeaway was that proactively, I have a tool, I have this angel, I'm gonna be creative.

Lisa | 29:12

Yeah.

Vimla | 29:14

So Lisa, as you look back, what was this session really about for you?

Lisa | 29:20

This session was a thought lab. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Right. It was a creative thought lab. And if I think about my life, especially when it's busy and there's a lot going on and I'm managing lots of inputs, I often cut my own personal thought labs out of my calendar. Right. I don't give myself time to sit with myself and have these creative moments where I'm thinking about how I want to be. And so having a coach present, almost scared guarantees that I'm gonna show up.

Vimla | 30:04

Yeah.

Lisa | 30:05

You know, at the very end of my session with Ilinca, we did debrief together about what were some of the skills present that were vital to that thought partnership. I'll just say that the presence, just her being there meant that I was gonna show up, but the way she was present also mattered. The listening, just having somebody listen to me say my things out loud allowed me to continue to say the things. So I eventually arrived at something that was like ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, <laugh>. I might not do that if I was on my own. And then also having somebody who could throw an idea out onto the canvas or onto the pallet, she's not attached to it, she's just offering it up so that I can express a feeling about it, A gut feeling, yep, that's it. Or a, nope, that's not it. It's more like this. That's super valuable. And um, you know, if she took it personally that her idea didn't work for me, that would shut the space down. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. But thankfully coaches don't do that <laugh> or at least they're trained not to do that.

Lisa | 31:25

I don't know, I think that this thought partnership allows me to uncover parts of myself that might not show up if I was having this conversation with myself or if I was having this conversation with somebody close to me like a friend or a family member. Because they might be more attached to the situation and there might be more carefulness like we've already designed that we don't need to be careful in the coaching relationship or we need to be careful, but we've designed, you know, it's a safe container. Let's just say it's a safe container. So having a thought partner present is another way of looking out what we did in this session.

Vimla | 32:21

Yeah, yeah. That's very true. Another great session with a powerful coach and a powerful experience for the client.

Lisa | 32:35

Yeah. I feel like by having this podcast and helping people embody and really listen into what coaching can be like all its, you know, million possible forms, I feel really lucky that we're both getting a lot of good coaching.

Vimla | 32:53

Yeah. So for our listeners, here is the formula for making an awesome life. Awesome. Have a thought partner and figure out your habit patterns and create a plan for them. Create a plan for a new habit.

Lisa | 33:15

Yes, yes, yes. It is possible to lay down new track.

Vimla | 33:20

Yeah, very true. All right. Onto next time be mindful of those habit patterns

Lisa | 33:28

And speaking of next time, we have an upcoming episode where we actually compare coaching to something that's similar to coaching but not quite coaching. Stay tuned for that episode. It's gonna be an interesting one.

Vimla | 33:45

Yeah, absolutely. And as usual, if you would like to get in touch with us, visit our website, look at the show notes, there will be links to get in touch with us and also a link to her to get in touch with the link

Lisa | 34:00

And be coached

Vimla | 34:02

Yes. And be coached.

Lisa | 34:04

So that's dub dub up your vital self slash coaching confidential. See you next time.