More Turtle, Less Hare
11 observations based on 21 years of coaching
11 observations about what has remained true after two decades of coaching and working with writers of all kinds:
1. Committing to working with a coach and/or joining a group alters your sense of hope, possibility, and excitement from the moment you decide to do it. You start thinking differently and believing more fully in yourself and what you are up to.
2. Fun fact: The Hebrew word for "coach" shares its root (א - מ - ן) with the words "art," "believe," "trust," "authentic," "confidence," and "amen." How cool is that?
3. A coach is someone who believes in you. Who encourages your authenticity and inspires confidence in your inherent creativity. Who celebrates your learning (amen!). Knowing someone sees that you already have in you what you need can help you see it, too.
4. Having structure and accountability can be game-changers. I cannot tell you how many sessions have started with someone saying they never would have written what they wrote if they hadn't had a meeting on the calendar.
5. Drama is overrated. It's not always about leaps and bounds. Incremental changes and slow-and-steady consistency are nothing to sneeze at. More turtle, less hare.
6. We are not meant to do any of this alone. Connection is crucial. Being with others and seeing that our struggles and doubts are human lessens the self-criticism so many of us lug around.
7. Good enough really can be good enough. (Say it with me now.)
8. Everything counts.
9. Energy ebbs and flows. It just does. Ebbs are not emergencies. They are opportunities to trust the process.
10. The "bigger, better, different" syndrome is real. It's borne of a culture built on competition, comparison, and commercialism. It's sneaky and pervasive. Shifting to a mindset and approach to your writing and life based on enoughness, curiosity, community, and self-compassion takes practice.
11. Trying to do too many things at once tends to backfire. What if you picked ONE thing to focus on this spring? I'm offering a brand-new opportunity to do just that, with all of the support I've seen work so well over the past two decades!
Give yourself the gifts of structure, accountability, and community this spring with Find Your Focus! Details & registration are all here on my website: https://www.jenaschwartz.com/focus
