Don'tcha just love it when the Universe conspires with your highest self, even if your here-and-now self goes along with all of it kicking and screaming?
Yesterday, I sat for my final, big, much-anticipated, nerve sizzling oral exam for my coaching certification process, basically what I've been working toward for a year and a half. I'd love to be sitting here telling you that I was a calm, cool, collected cucumber in the days beforehand. I'd LOVE to tell you that, on Tuesday, for example, I called my coach and said, "Ya know Marla, I just really don't have anything I need to be coached on today. I've got life tied up in a tidy little bow and I'm ready to take my exam just about any time now!" Sigh. I wish!
So Tuesday I was coming completely unglued. Yeah, I know. Not such a proud moment for the coach extraordinaire! She who expounds all things calm and rational when we get back in touch with our center! Well, my center had gone for a hike. A long hike. And thank god for Marla!
As you may know, a coach's #1 job is to ask questions. It's just not in our job descriptions to tell you what to do, or when, or with whom, or why. We believe that you have your own answers and that you're a capable, rockin' human being who just needs a partner to ask some new questions to help you look into corners of yourself that you'd forgotten, or maybe even never visted before.
And doing the exact opposite is how Marla got my uncoachable butt to snap to! For the first time ever, she told me straight up what she wanted for me. Postpone your clients between now and your exam, she advised. CANCEL your remaining practice coaching sessions, she urged. Practice EXTREME self care NOW, she said. After grumbling around for a few minutes, making up excuses as to why I couldn't do any of that and really needed to keep myself in this twist of existential angst, I decided that after eight months of working together, maybe I oughta trust her. So I did, and it was amazing!
And here's where the Universe danced in: our computer crashed that very afternoon. For more than 48 hours we were completely "unplugged" here at the Neff/Hildreth household, which, to us, is like not having water or air in our house. And, it turned out to be PERFECT, and exactly what I needed! Instead of obsessing about the unknown test ahead of me, Robert and I walked. Instead of calling all my coaching buddies and commiserating in my nervousness with them, we talked about anything BUT my exam. We cooked. We ate. And yes, at first it was a little weird not to have instant access to all the inane bits of information we look up all the time, but it got me and us back to ourselves, back to the earth, back to what matters.
And Thursday? For my exam? I was ready, and I rocked. :-)
So watch for news in a few weeks that I've gotten the "official" word and can now proudly call myself a "Certified Professional Co-Active Coach."
And watch for your own Universal winks. How is something bigger conspiring with YOUR higher self when you're not looking?
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