Professional Development: Not a Box Ticking Exercise

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The last year or so, I’ve been working more and more with people who are coaches and practitioners themselves, and doing that kind of work always gets me thinking more about how it is I show up for the people I work with, and how important doing the work yourself really is.

The thing is, as a coach or a practitioner, the person you are working with is always going to look to you to decide how to feel about something. My reality- how I view life, emotions, horsemanship- is playing out on my face, in my expressions, in my body language, in my everything. Consequently, every person I work with is experiencing the reality of how I see myself, and how I view the world, and that, in turn, shapes our experience together.

If you are wanting those you work with to be more accepting of different states of experience; if you are wanting them to be more understanding of the temporary nature of feeling, sensation, and emotion; if you are wanting them to develop more responsiveness and curiosity, then those understandings have to be anchored in your own body first.

Not as a thought. Not as something you have read in a book. But as something you feel. Something that is so true for you that when you are met with discomfort, or questioning, or concern, your body and experience feels back into their space with a sense of stability and non-judgment.

“Professional development” is not a box that you tick. It’s not a meeting you show up at. It’s caring enough about the people you work with and the shared experience you create to do your own work. So, when the big questions or moments come at you, you can catch them, hold them, and reflect back to them different options that give them more choices about how to create a different reality for themselves.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

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