Katherine Jamieson Coaching

Each of us contains seeds of stories, poems, and essays, but how do we create the rich soil for them to take root and grow?

This May I’ll be teaching an online, three-session course “Contemplative Writing: Uncovering the Writer Within” with the Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science.

In this class, we’ll engage in cultivating a contemplative writing practice, learning how creative flow can enrich our lives and offer access to compassion, wisdom, and joy. Inspiration will come from in-class exercises, developing a regular writing habit, and selected readings and resources.

Join me online via Zoom for three Tuesdays, May 7, 14, 28th from 6:30 - 8:00pm ET

For more info or to register see link in Bio or go to: https://nalandainstitute.org/events/contemplativewriting/

Please DM me for more details — I’m happy to answer any questions. Hope to write with you this spring!

I wrote about my experience corresponding with prisoners about meditation and Buddhism for Lion's Roar magazine.

You can read the full essay here: https://www.lionsroar.com/i-miss-the-sky/

What's on Your 'Afraid To-Do List'?
The surprisingly simple power of facing your fears

A few years ago I had a business coaching client who was very fearful of all the things she had to do to start her own practice. She’d worked in the corporate world for many years, and had high-level skills, but when it came to representing herself and asking to get paid she was petrified.

At one of our first sessions she told me that she’d created two separate “To-Do” Lists. One was the basic record of all the things that had to be accomplished. But the other was a new variant altogether: an “Afraid To-Do List.” Here she had written down the steps she was too scared to take but that she knew would help her grow her business.

I’d venture to say that all of us have a running inventory of things that are just too alarming to add to our day-to-day tasks: Reach out to the acquaintance who intimidates me but could help me get my biggest contract. Learn that new technology. Raise my rates. Develop my public speaking skills. Quit my underpaying job.

These are the aspirational to-do’s that sit around in the dusty corners of our subconscious, the personal bogeymen (bogeypeople?) hamstringing our success and motivation. They seem so big and daunting that we don’t dare to think or speak them, much less write them down. These fears become the awkward furniture of our lives that we learn to maneuver around, as they impinge on our space and freedom. But they feel too heavy to move and so we just get used to living with them day after day, year after year.

I applauded my client’s strategy of making her fears manifest, and I figured that we’d work through the frightful list at some point down the line. But when we met a few weeks later something strange had happened. Looking back at her two lists, she realized that there had been an unexpected alchemy. The lists had co-mingled in her mind and, without even realizing it, she’d begun tackling her “Afraid”s. To my surprise and hers, she’d already crossed a few of the big baddies off, and was well on her way to vanquishing them all.

It turns out that just the act of writing down the scary things took a lot of their power away. Instead of dark shadows that sucked her confidence and energy she realized that they were just words on the page after all. Once they were converted to the neutral medium of pen and paper they became doable, manageable, even benign. So benign that she was able to accomplish things she’d thought were far beyond her capacity in a short time.

What my client realized is something all of us can learn: our fears are only as powerful as our minds allow them to be. They rise naturally when we challenge and stretch ourselves, but they don’t have to become lifelong roadblocks. By treating scary tasks as banal, no different from say, Fold laundry, she was able to move past years of paralysis into a much bigger vision of herself and her capacity.

I now encourage all my clients to write similar kinds of lists that reveal their deepest, most hidden fears. If we dust off our terrors and bring them to light they show themselves to be a lot less powerful than we imagine, like the monsters we were once convinced lived under our beds.

So, what are some items on your “Afraid To-Do List”? And when will you be ready to write them down?

What’s on Your ‘Afraid To Do List’? The surprisingly simple power of facing your fears

Marketing yourself means stepping into the spotlight, something many women have been trained to avoid. Do you find marketing challenging?

You can also find this piece on Medium: shorturl.at/afotV

Why Women Entrepreneurs Will Do Anything to Avoid Marketing

When I was in writing grad school, I had a professor who used to say, “It’s easier to clean your desk than to write your novel.” When we don’t want to do the “hard thing” we’ll find tons of smaller, easier things to take care of instead. This is called “constructive procrastination,” which is really just plain old procrastination dressed up in a cute outfit.

A lot of women tell me they want to grow their businesses. Often, they’re extremely talented and skilled having trained for many years. But instead of figuring out how to market themselves and drum up more clients, they’re busy taking another 500-hour yoga teaching program or joining a 3rd mastermind group. In other words, they’re constructively procrastinating.

For the most part, aspiring women entrepreneurs already have everything it takes to provide a great service. They are passionate about their work, so passionate that they often undercharge or give away their services. This is their comfort zone. Learning, which is essentially passive, is also their comfort zone.

Many women small business owners spend a lot of time doing these safe and seemingly productive things. But it’s important to notice what actually brings in revenue and creates opportunities for exposure. What pushes us to step out powerfully once and for all?

Marketing is active and demanding. It means emerging from the shadows and into the spotlight, something that many women have been trained to avoid. It involves public speaking, public writing, and being seen. To market, you have to tell people what you’re all about and, plainly, what you think they should buy. Because if you’re in business you’re selling something. And if you’re a solo entrepreneur you’re selling yourself: the unique work you have to offer to the world.

The bigger your comfort zone, the smaller your life. If you really want to run a business you have to stretch and do the difficult, and rewarding, work of getting in front of an audience of strangers and telling your truth. You have to have the gumption to ask people to pay for what you do. You have to take risks.

Here’s the hard truth: if you’re undercutting yourself or working for free, but not marketing, you’re running a charity. If you’re getting certification after certification, but not marketing, you have an expensive hobby. If you’re always chatting in groups about your entrepreneurial aspirations, but not marketing, you’re a socialite, not a businesswoman.

That said, if you’re willing to face your own fears and self-limiting beliefs it doesn’t have to be this way. You might be much closer to having a successful business than you realize.

Why Women Entrepreneurs Will Do Anything to Avoid Marketing When I was in writing grad school, I had a professor who used to say, “It’s easier to clean your desk than to write your novel.” (Having…

Calling all women entrepreneurs! Join my free webinar next Thursday through the Women’s Business Development Council to learn how creating programs can be the key to developing a more efficient, lucrative and enjoyable business. Sign up here: http://shorturl.at/eDHI4

January 19th is the day we're most likely to abandon our aspirations for the new year. But are we really giving up on 2023 so quickly?

Read my new piece on some alternatives to the "If you ain't first you're last" life philosophy:

It’s National Quitter’s Day! How Will You Celebrate? If you haven’t heard, January 19th has been named National Quitters Day. Some people say it’s even earlier, the second Friday of January…

I’ll be teaching a 3-part class on Contemplative Writing for the Nalanda Institute on Monday evenings this June. More details at the link below and feel to DM me with questions. ✍🏻 🌱

Contemplative Writing: Uncovering the Writer Within - Nalanda Institute Join visiting faculty Katherine Jamieson in this special 3-session course to uncover the writer within each of us.

Frantic vs. Swift: Why Language Matters

A few years ago at a meditation retreat I was assigned to lead the house-keeping team. As I was doling out spray bottles from the cleaning supplies closet, I noticed a message on the dry erase board. Below a note about rinsing the mops, someone had scrawled a simple reminder for how we should go about our work: "swift not frantic."

I was feeling a bit overwhelmed at that moment, and the instruction caught my attention and calmed me. I’ve thought about it many times since.

Frantic is a manic, neurotic word, reminiscent of frenzy. Swift, on the other hand, is a graceful, harmonious word, imparting the sense that everything can be taken care of with ease.

To write or speak effectively we must become conscious of our word choices because they affect ourselves and others in ways we don’t fully understand. We use language all the time for many banal reasons and we tend to forget how powerful it is. In truth, words impact our emotional states and influence our view of reality.

Frantic or swift? Every day we choose how we think about and describe our world. Let’s make sure the reality we evoke with our words is the one we want to create.

Business and Writing Coaching for Women Leaders You've worked hard and have the achievements to prove it. But you haven't  been able to hit your income goals, bring in enough clients or write your book. What's holding you back? Is it lack of confidence, support, or organization? Let's figure it out together so you can become the leader you were ...

People are obsessed with the writing rituals of famous authors. Whether it’s scrawling longhand on yellow legal pads (Susan Sontag), renting a hotel room for peace and quiet (Maya Angelou), or composing naked (Hemingway and Victor Hugo), there are legion stories about how various authors throughout history called on the muses.

Our collective fixation on these rituals is an attempt to tap into literary genius by tracking its breadcrumbs back through the minds of renowned authors. The thinking seems to be: perhaps if I begin each work day by “sniffing a drawer of aging apples,” as Flaubert did, then my next book will sing like Madame Bovary…

Alas, no. Many a writer has attempted to imitate the rituals of others and simply become tired, confused or drunk. The path to establishing a successful ritual is much simpler: you must find the one that works for you.

Here’s a wonderful quote by Toni Morrison about her writing ritual:

"I always get up and make a cup of coffee while it is still dark — it must be dark — and then I drink the coffee and watch the light come…for me this ritual comprises my preparation to enter a space that I can only call nonsecular…Writers all devise ways to approach that place where they expect to make the contact, where they become the conduit, or where they engage in this mysterious process. For me, light is the signal in the transition. It’s not being in the light, it’s being there before it arrives."

The key to all ritual lies in Morrison’s line: preparation to enter a space that I can only call nonsecular. Most writers find that they need some way of coming into that space of creativity and vision and image and nonlinear thought that allows for the best writing to flow. But how do we devise rituals that prepare our mind to write?

When cultivating your writing ritual you might consider:
• Choosing a regular time of day to write. Your mind will become habituated to creating at that hour.
• Finding the space to write that feels the most comfortable for you, whether it’s your kitchen table or a park bench.
• Trying writing by hand for a change. Ideas often flow faster when you’re untethered from the computer.
• Writing some stream-of-consciousness pages first. Many writers prime their creativity by writing freely for a few minutes before jumping into a more directed project.
• Creating for just one person. Maybe it’s your husband, wife, child, friend. Bring to mind who you want to move, impress or make laugh with your work, and then resolve to forget about what anyone else may think.

Writing rituals develop through trial and error. In time, you’ll figure out what distracts you from your work (unopened mail, phones, noise etc.) and what helps you keep your focus and attention on crafting your words. Writers experiment to see what inspires them, and with repetition it becomes a simple, replicable habit.

Give yourself the chance to develop a ritual that facilitates your writing, but doesn’t create more excuses or barriers. If you start thinking, “I can’t write today because I don’t have my favorite pen, or my special cookies, or my lucky sweater…” then you’re heading out of ritual and into obsessive territory.

The trick is to create rituals that are expansive enough that you can enact them even when you’re traveling, busy, or exhausted. Rituals should support you, never limit or imprison you. In the immortal warning words of E.B. White, “A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.”

You Can't Afford to Self-Sabotage

Recently, I was working with a client on writing her bio and she neglected to mention that she’d been featured on national television. Another had omitted her master’s degree because it’s in the arts and she didn’t think it related to her current work in consulting. A third left off her extensive bodywork training even though she’s in the wellness field.

Unfortunately, this is a common story: women unconsciously self-sabotaging by downplaying their major accomplishments. Many women struggle with a “self-promotion gap,” a hesitancy about talking powerfully about their abilities and talents.

Others actively undermine themselves, acknowledging their faults rather than highlighting their successes. This tendency is particularly destructive for solo entrepreneurs who bear the responsibility of marketing themselves.

Not being able to talk clearly and unapologetically about your achievements costs you prestige, income, and credibility, and paves the way for less skilled people to garner more opportunities. Cultivating the ability to present as capable and confident is crucial to giving yourself the best chance of success.

After all the work you’ve put into developing your unique skillset, don’t succumb to the fatal flaw of undercutting yourself and limiting your own growth potential along the way.

If you find yourself struggling with how to talk about your skills and talents, come to my free workshop "Telling the Story of You: Writing an Impactful Narrative Bio" tomorrow, February 10th with the University of Hartford.

You can register here: bit.ly/3IqXnB3

“The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.”
-- George Orwell

I used to think talking about perfection was a kind of humble brag. “I’m such a perfectionist!” I’d say, mildly befuddled by my own long-lived tendencies to hone, refine, obsess. Compared with other ways of being, it seemed light and harmless, even quirky.

But I was naive. Perfectionism is a deeply confused philosophy that holds its adherents captive to a mythical reality. That everything will one day just “fall into place” or go “like clockwork.” That some kind of imaginary bargain can be struck with the messy, chaotic, unpredictable state of the world. And the central fallacy: that we are the ones who will somehow be able to orchestrate this pristine scenario. That it’s all up to us, the perfectionist superheroes.

All the while, the clock is ticking. While we’re propping up the mirage, living in allegiance to a made-up idea of a better version of ourselves just around the corner, other people are humming along with “good enough.” They are doing a fine job, raising a fine family, writing a fine book. And while we’re spinning our wheels, the imperfectionists are actually getting things done.

At its heart, perfectionism is about fear, it’s about anxiety. It’s about delaying your efforts until the exact right moment arrives (and it never does). It’s a colossal waste of time, a way of hamstringing yourself and your future indefinitely. It’s about restraint, limitation, tension, putting a lid on your own capacity. True art, creativity and self-expression are impossible because these emerge from the cauldron of nascent ideas, needing air and light and space to develop. If tamped down in the formative stages they will not grow, and neither will you.

But it doesn’t come from nowhere, this self-made prison. Gloria Steinem’s calls perfectionism “internalized oppression.” The “not good enough” messages start to rain down early, and the more sensitive we are, the more vulnerable we are. And eventually we begin to mistake those berating, never satisfied voices for our own thoughts.

Who first told you had to be perfect?

When did this message come through, and how long has it been holding you hostage?

Are you ready to let it go?

Calling all entrepreneurial women! Join me for this free online workshop with the University of Hartford to learn the art of telling your own story. Register here: bit.ly/3IqXnB3