RSK Coaching

Holding nuanced and complex thoughts and feelings is often a challenge. People seek validation externally as the discomfort of "not knowing" becomes too hard to bear. At a time when information is a few clicks away, attentions spans shrinking and gratification harder to resist, we have to choose. This creates polarisation and a tendency to see the world in black or white. Our ability to hold complexity and nuance is therefore reduced.

Things are hardly ever black or white. They are always more complex and nuanced than that. And I believe that we need to practice and re-learn "not knowing", to have a more compassionate response to this world we live in.

This is what I felt the film Poor Things made me do to some extent.

Poor Things has had a big success in awards season, including best actress Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA to Emma Stone, and further awards to special effects, costume design and production design among others. The film also enjoyed an enthusiastic critical response. It was called a "Virtuoso comic epic" by the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw, and "visually sumptuous and gleefully clever" by Manohla Dargis of the NYT. In this article I share my thoughts about this film which I found cinematically intriguing, but thematically confusing.

You can read my full blog post by clicking here:

https://www.rskcoaching.com/post/through-the-coaching-lens-poor-things

Feel free to share and I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Ruth

(Illustration by Evie Fridel)

When we become aware of a story that we want to change, it is interesting to think about what is it there for in the first place?

Often, the stories we've created - beliefs, truths, thoughts - are there to protect us from something that we want to avoid for some reason.

Choosing to shed a story, can become easier if we try to articulate what the danger is, in letting that story go? What are we risking? Naming it - whether it be shame, fear, doubt, sense of inadequacy or anything else that we have been hiding away - can make it easier to then change the story.

When the stories are old, often so are the kernels they are protecting. And by naming them we sometimes find that we do not feel them anymore, or have found good ways of coping with them.

Thinking of a story you have told yourself for a long time - can you name what it is trying to protect?

Ruth

Walking alone in the park I noticed my shadow looking like a woman dancing in a flowing dress. Smiling in my joggers and hiking boots, wrapped up warm, I thought of how different this image is from how I actually look and feel right now.

That dancer is me! Somewhere it is there, inside of me.

Learning to recognise the different personalities inside us, can help us when they clash, when they are in doubt, when they need to find the support within. It allows us to accept feelings, thoughts and behaviours as a representation of a part of us, not the whole of us, and to become less attached to those feelings and thoughts.

I loved my shadow on that walk. How do you feel about yours?

Ruth

I have been silent for a few months now struggling to find words to things I feel, and that happen around me.

Noticing the guilt and around not publishing anything, and being silent, I have decided to sit with it as opposed to act on it.

Not knowing what to say is perfectly acceptable. In the current world we live in, everyone feels compelled to react, to say what they think and feel, to take a side. Often these words are subjective, motivated by fear and social pressures. The result is often uninformed, virtue signalling, inauthentic and disconnected from people’s core values. Words just become irrelevant and cheap.

Rather than allowing my guilt to motivate my words, I have decided to honour them by allowing them to form and then dissolve, to appear and disappear, and to remain internal and “marinate”, as my girls would say.

I don’t know that this is right - some would say it is clearly wrong - but it is respectful of my sense of immense relentless grief and… speechlessness.

I am giving myself permission to not know, to listen more, to just be, even if it’s uncomfortable. At the same time I want to reach out, connect with people, and to engage with love, compassion and an open mind. And to wish us all a good 2024.

Ruth

#2024

What can curiosity bring to your life?

New blog post - Coaching Snippet: On Indecisiveness.

⁠Why is it so hard to make a decision? Do you ever find yourself in a situation where you are just unable to see the right choice? What would it feel like to find a clearer way out of a dilemma?

This coaching snippet shows a way of clarifying the process of decision making and finding trust in oneself so that one can move forward.

Having to make a choice is often paralysing. When offered a sweet in a shop, my daughter used to get herself so tangled in indecisiveness, she would eventually choose to leave empty handed and angry.

Making a choice or a decision means letting go of other options. And usually there is no way for us to know whether our decision was the right one. But we still have to make it.

Disentangling the threads of this knot can involve going back to previous situations in which we faced a dilemma, and trying to assess its ensuing impact. This is helpful in giving us a sense of trust and agency, knowing that we can manage the consequences of choosing, whether rightly or wrongly.

My conversation with Chloe is an example of that - read it in my recent blog & let me know how does this resonate with you.

https://www.rskcoaching.com/post/coaching-snippet-on-indecisiveness

Ruth.
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(Illustration Credit: )⁠
*Name changed for privacy

If you are ready to start changing your life, feel free to contact me.
I invite you to schedule a free session:

https://www.rskcoaching.com/

I look forward to our chat.⁠
⁠
Ruth.⁠

Every expert starts as a beginner -

How we were in the past - does it mean we have to be the same now?

Things are more complex than they seem →

Being playful with how we look at things can help us see them in a different way.

A painting in a gallery is a good example.

Looking straight on will show us certain details, but looking from a different angle will show us something we didn’t see before. Sometimes it’s brush strokes, sometimes a colour that looks different. Sometimes it may be a different thought or feeling we get when we look a little longer.

Trying to sketch what we see would make us see new things yet again, because we suddenly shift our gaze to tiny details we weren’t quite looking at before.

Talking about what we see can give us another layer of perspective, and writing things down - even more.

In my work with clients I sometimes ask them to use their phone camera to film something as they are trying to work through an issue. Trying to think creatively about visually conveying an idea gives us the ultimate new perspective. It helps us lose our self judgment and find our agency.

If you want to try and do that, feel free to contact me.

How can you look at things differently to create a new perspective?

Ruth.

Most things are hard before they get easier.