"Coaching Moments" takes a
thoughtful, and sometimes lighthearted, look at how coaching
can be interwoven into our daily lives.
Different
Coaches, Different Voices
by Janice Hunter
I love hearing
silence used beautifully. The perfect pause that reaches out
like ripples around a pebble in a dark pool. A poem where
the unspoken word can say more than the most carefully
crafted chapter. The silence between the notes that makes
the music.
I went to a
Scottish folk concert last night and sat in awe as the
fiddles and pipes had a spirited conversation, the flute
became a voice, the guitar wrapped itself around them all
and the drumbeat turned into a heartbeat, a handclapping,
footstomping hall full of joy and applause. As I sat
listening to the band, watching the stage lights pick out
their foot tapping, swaying forms in beams of changing
coloured light on the dark stage, I remembered how I used to
feel performing my own songs in the heat of the lights,
savouring the silence between the fading of the last note
and the start of the clapping.
I sang my way
around Europe when I worked as a language teacher and
translator; my voice was a vital part of who I was and what
I did. After I had my kids, I moved back to Scotland and
slowly, imperceptibly, I stopped writing, stopped singing,
stopped playing the guitar and even stopped speaking the
foreign languages I was fluent in. Silence gently settled
around my soul like snow.
When I drifted
into life coaching, on my journey out of what I now realise
was low grade chronic depression, my passion to tell the
whole world about it bubbled up, spilled over and finally
gushed out in the torrent that helped me rediscover my
voice.
Meeting other
coaches in teleclasses and online was a bonus, like watching
a film with a cast of wonderful, colourful characters. I
have a colleague who coaches with the quiet, understated
elegance of a Grace Kelly. One coaching buddy has the gentle
strength and loving radiance of a spiritual leader – I've
never met her but I just know she has a twinkle in
her eye! Another has a voice like hot chocolate; her
coaching sessions are like a studio where you turn yourself
and your life into a work of art. And we all know someone
who coaches like Bette Davies on a bad day, right? So who
would you be?
I suspect I'd
be Maria from The Sound of Music, twirling around on a
mountain top, squashing innocent edelweiss underfoot,
tripping my way clumsily through cobbled streets and
coaching sessions oblivious to the fact that I was knocking
people over with my swinging guitar case as I sang "I have
confidence in sunshine…!"
It didn't
surprise me when I failed Step 2 of the IAC exam. I gush, I
interrupt inappropriately and I have this overwhelming urge
to fix things, to make children's clothes out of curtains
and get people singing about their favourite things.
Can I see
myself ever getting certified? Well, Maria never did make it
as a nun, although, thanks to her Mother Superior’s glorious
rendition of "Climb Every Mountain", she got the handsome
husband, the home full of happy kids and found her dream. Am
I glad to have my voice back, a spirited, life loving, world
worshipping voice? Oh yes. Oh, dear God, YES!!!
Janice
Hunter lives with her family in Scotland and is currently
working towards IAC certification. She particularly enjoys
supporting other coaches through her writing and can be
contacted at
ezinenewsletters@aol.com.
