https://www.karolinafrydrych.com/

Karolina.coach, Bali (2026)

18/04/2023

"Wow, you're like Marie Kondo for the mind!" - a coaching client said to me today, and I'm considering making it my marketing tagline 😂

She was deciding between two professional paths. Her thoughts about the two choices at the beginning of the session were about as organized as a bowl of fresh spaghetti 🍝

✨CLARITY is one of my favorite coaching topics. Looking at the chaotic bundle of thoughts at the beginning of the session and slowly untangling the loose strings into a neat map of what's going on.

I blame my background: 8 years of professional data analysis. 8 years of taking the raw zeros and ones and translating them into business insights and pretty, orderly charts 📊

But there is an important difference when doing the same with the human mind:

The emotional layer 🫀

The why the path that seems reasonable creates intuitive resistance.
The emotions she would have to face if she committed to the other path.
The old patterns that get triggered when things don't go as planned.

For me untangling THAT is what I love about this work.

She left the session feeling lighter, with greater awareness, and with a map of what was going on for her in both thoughts and feelings 🗺️

Almost as if we put them into IKEA boxes, creating more space for conscious decision-making and focused actions.

I never knew how to describe this coaching superpower until her comment:

I'm Marie Kondo for the mind.
🧠 ➞ 📁📁📁

Need a mind organizing consultant?
That’s what I do 😊

27/11/2022

Struggling to find your unique gift?

Try this:

Think of someone who is jealous of you. Whoever comes to mind - that’s the right person.

Now, imagine you are them and say exactly what they are jealous about. Mimic them like a child, exaggerate. And take notes!

The words can sound like:

”Why are you always so ___”
”You are too ___”
”Who do you think you are to ___”
”How do you do that? It seems like ___”
”I wish I could ___ like you!”

Look at what you wrote 📝

Which quality do they attack the most?

Trust it.

Jealous eyes go straight for the gift.

🎁 How does it feel to be the person that has that quality?

🎁 How would it look like for you to own it more?

(exercise by David Bedrick)

26/07/2022

Why do we do things we say we don’t want to do?

3 years ago my coach asked me "how are you feeling right in this moment?" and my first reaction was "What? What do you mean? I’m feeling… fine".

Unfortunately many people have as much idea about what exactly they are feeling as I had back then.

We distinguish between feeling good, feeling bad plus maybe stressed or tired.

More intense emotional states are described as "I need a drink" 🍷

We even miss the vocabulary to talk about what we feel. (How does complacent or sullen feel?? 🤨)

At the same time emotions are the strongest drivers of our behaviour.

🧠 The mind likes to claim that it is in control and can ignore the emotions

🫀Emotions ignore the mind and take over anyway 🙃

No wonder that we don’t do things we say we want to do and the other way around.

So, what can you do about it?

Start with this:

How are you feeling, right in this moment?

Answers: good, bad, fine and stressed are not allowed 😊

If you want to improve your emotional vocabulary there is an app called Mood Meter.

It’s a little chart that shows you a list of emotions sorted by how positive or negative they are and their intensity so you can find the most fitting word to describe how you are feeling.

📚 And if you want to dive deeper I recommend two books:
Permission To Feel by Marc Brackett and Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown 🤓

23/01/2022

This is a common interview question to test candidate’s creativity.

Advanced version: look around the room and pick the first object you see.

How many uses of this object you can think of in two minutes? ⏱
The less obvious the better!

How many did you find?
Let me know in the comments 👇🏼

21/01/2022

I’m emotional.

My boyfriend used to call the manifestation of it “a roller coaster”, “ups and downs” or “drama” but he finally settled for an expression from a ta**ra course that we watched, describing the feminine energy: “a passionate dance”.

💃🏻

It takes away the negative connotation.

Because the truth is, he enjoys it. As a completely opposite personality he appreciates the colors it brings to his life 🎨

Being emotional means waking up on a Friday morning and feeling so much that I already know I’m going to spend a big chunk of the morning attending to my inner state. It’s always been like that, I learned to manage it.

In fact, I got so good at managing it that it became my coaching superpower. When a client describes me a complicated and irrational inner state I’ve probably experienced it before so I can relate to it, acknowledge it and reflect it back to them in a helpful way.
I probably also know how to help them shift it.

💃🏻

In such moments, journaling and creative activities are incredibly helpful to me 📝

They keep me sane.

If you have a demanding inner world it wants to be expressed.

Each time I get annoyed at the “passionate dance” I remind myself that maybe it is hard to control and it is often inconvenient but it is also the source of creativity.

You can’t create work that evokes emotions without feeling them first.

And then I think: Ok… that’s a fair deal.

💃🏻

What are your go-to ways of dealing with strong emotions?

14/01/2022

Substitute ”What do I feel like doing?” for “What’s my purpose now?”.
The answer might be illuminating.

Feelings are important but they aren’t the best guide on how to spend your time in the moment when you have to make a decision.

They will often whisper excuses to your ear to keep you from doing things that are difficult, mundane or uncomfortable.

Asking “What’s my purpose now?” adds a moral component to the decision and it and reminds you of your long-term goals.

There is reality’s work that only you can do.

A project that will never see the light of day if you don’t make it happen.
A friend or family member who will feel lonely unless YOU pick up the phone and ask how they are doing.
Or simply bills that will not get paid unless you take care of that.

A useful question to find your purpose for today is:

“What would not get done if I were not here?”

(From “Improv wisdom. Don’t prepare, just show up” by Patricia Ryan Madson)

11/01/2022

Is creativity something that can be learned?

The answer is: no.
It doesn’t have to be learned.

We ALL come to this world creative.

Children naturally come up with ideas and solutions that we would never think of.
Why? Because they don’t know how things “should be”. They improvise, connect ideas that we don’t think should be put together and create something new.
Like a cake made of sand 🎂
They put together elements in a way that makes sense to them without judging it as ”right” or ”wrong”.

We all had this ability, but growing up, we forgot how to access it.

Creativity doesn’t have to be learned. It has to be cultivated.

It needs a bit of space free of the usual chores, worries and obligations.
It needs time just for you.
And it needs some encouragement.

If you ask yourself how exactly to cultivate it, Julia Cameron's book The Artist's Way lays out a proven, step-by-step process that you can follow.

It’s a little magical, a little mysterious, but it works. I’ve seen the effects of it on myself and on the participants of my group program: The Artists’ Circle.

In just 15 weeks, their lives get filled with new colors, activities and feelings.

They find a sense of aliveness that they didn’t have in years.

Writing starts flowing again, they start brimming with creativity.

And they never want to go back to their lives as they were before.

A total creative transformation.

If you feel tempted to experience it yourself, I invite you to join my next Artists’ Circle.

We will start on the 01.02.2022.

I would love to see you there 👩🏻‍🎨

09/08/2021

Every time you think you are not ready or good enough:

📚To share your knowledge
📝To create and publish your art
👩🏻‍💻To offer a service

Think of all the people that helped and inspired you.

Did they do it perfectly? I mean, do you think they were 100% happy with it?
Every time?
What if self-doubt stopped them before they came into your world?

Don’t do it to all the people you can help or inspire today ✨

Have a wonderful week 🔥

23/06/2021

“I feel like I’ve lost 1,5 year locked in my apartment.”
“I just feel tired of social media and demotivated.”
“I gained weight. I want to go out and socialize but I don’t want to show my body especially with 33 degrees outside.”

Taking stock after the pandemic has been a theme of this week’s life coaching sessions with my clients.

Especially facing what has not gone as well as it could have. In an ideal world we would not only smoothly transition to the old normal but our new normal would include speaking a new language, playing piano and some newly acquired salsa moves that we picked up from youtube. We would also be beaming with positivity and motivation as if the lockdown had been a relaxing break.

Except, it wasn’t.

“Several months of talking to my girlfriend with a lagging internet connection.”
“I haven’t hugged my parents in a year.”

At first I tried to use some coaching models but I quickly realised that this wasn’t what my clients needed.
They needed me to hear them out and to sit with them in all of these negative emotions. To witness them with compassion.

“I don’t like my body now”
“I’ve felt isolated for a very long time”
“I’m tired of being strong”

Emotions need to be acknowledged and felt before they can be transformed.

This is done by sitting with them without trying to “make it better”.

Only after that were we able to start talking about the ”next steps”.

If you’ve felt like that in the last days, you are not alone.

I’ve felt like that too and so have my coaching clients.

Sending you a post-pandemic hug 🤗

And if you want to chat, just send me a message 💌

04/05/2021

A. is a professional musician whose instagram videos made my jaw drop when I saw them for the first time.

He scheduled a coaching consultation with me because although he was actively making music, he struggled with thoughts about what others thought of him and his art, which on bad days made it challenging for him to sit down to work.

We agreed to do 6 coaching sessions together.

In the first one we explored his thoughts in the moments when he couldn't bring himself to start working:

"I keep thinking about what people will think of the piece that I'm working on, I feel like it's not good enough, or I think about everything on my to-do list and I feel overwhelmed"

Then we compared it to days when starting work was easy:

"I can't wait to spend time making music, I enjoy it, I don't care what others think. Even if I don't like it afterwards, it doesn't matter because I had fun creating it in the moment, I was in the flow."

Together, we thought of what can we learn from the good days that would make it easier for him to start working on the bad days.

"I could have a ritual of bringing myself to the right mindset, like reading out loud an affirmation:

MY ONLY JOB IS TO FOCUS ON THE NEXT LITTLE TASK IN FRONT OF ME AND HAVE FUN WHILE CREATING IT"

To make it a habit he decided to do it right after making coffee and stick his affirmation next to the coffee machine ☕️

We also established how he would track his progress and what reward he would give himself after a productive day: he would draw a little circle on a scorecard. Five of them would mean a bubble bath on the weekend 🛁

These, among other little changes in his habits and mindset made his work more fun and that made all the difference.

At the end of the coaching process he reported that he had never been more productive before and that the thoughts about what others thought of his art didn't bother him anymore.

He could just do what he loved most: make music 🎶🎷

04/01/2021

”I can’t imagine my successful next level self. I just can’t, I’m tired and scared. It’s too difficult. Maybe I’m not made for this. Besides, have you looked out the window?”

A moment of crisis. We all have them. They are a part of the journey.

If our moods were rooms in our minds where we spend time, a crisis is like discovering that you wandered all the way down to the basement and the lights suddenly went off. There are no windows and you are a long stairway away from any other room, especially the room on the top floor, Happiness. You get scared, it feels like you are stuck there forever.

But you never are. There is that light switch somewhere, you are going to find it if you stay calm.

Here is what I tell myself when I’m in the basement:

I’ve been here before and I got out of here before. I know there are no windows here so I can’t see my sparkly dreams. That’s fine, I know they are still there and I more or less remember the direction.
Now: what is the next, boring, unimaginative step I can take to keep moving forward?

🔦 I can finish the podcast episode I have been listening to.
🔦 I can finish the article I have been writing.
🔦 I can schedule the next mentoring session for my certificate.

That’s visible from where I am at the moment💡

And that’s enough for now.

This is how you extend your hand, slide your fingers along the wall and keep walking until you find the way out. That staircase to Calm, corridor to Curiosity, elevator to Happiness.

Just keep moving.

08/12/2020

Beliefs, or our “best current thinking”, are judgements and evaluations we hold about ourselves, other people and the world in general. It’s important to be aware of them because they can empower or disempower us.

As Henry Ford said: “Whether you think you can or can’t do something, you’re probably right”.

@ Palma De Mallorca, Spain

Karolina.coach

18/04/2023

27/11/2022

26/07/2022

23/01/2022

21/01/2022

14/01/2022

11/01/2022

09/08/2021

23/06/2021

04/05/2021

04/01/2021

08/12/2020

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