How “Becoming vs. Being” Became My Lesson of the Year

This year has been a complete bag of surrendering, leaving, grieving, learning, becoming and being all wadded up in a huge ball of emotions.

As a matter of fact, it’s been a Feast of change.  Through it all, I’ve been following Martha Beck’s Joy Diet and writing about how to create positive change rather than just survive it.  How appropriate that “Feasting” is the final chapter at the end of 2009!  Because that’s just the type of year it has been.

Quick Clarification:  Not “Feasting” as in joyful food consumption.  Feasting as in savoring life.  Celebrating the good and the sad, embracing your feelings (rather than stuffing them down with food) and being grateful for each morsel of laughter.

For kicks, let’s recap.

During 2009, I…

• Gave up the “golden handcuffs,” left my safe, life-long career and launched my own business. 
  (Favorite questions: “In this economy?  Are you crazy?”)
• Became a Certified Weight Coach. 
  (After coaching, being coached and shedding 25 pounds in 2008.)
• Watched the “safe” company I just left fold.
  (Security blanket named “I-can-go-back-if-this-doesn’t-work-out” gone.)
• Became a Certified Martha Beck Life Coach. 
  (Again… after coaching, being coached and dissolving 75 pounds of mental garbage in 2008.)
• Fell totally in love with my clients, fellow coaches and the art of coaching. 
  (And not in a weird, co-dependent way.  In an “I love seeing people do their thing” way.)
• Lost another 8 pounds by being in love with life (as opposed to dieting).
• Grieved the passing of my Grandfather.
• Co-authored and launched The Grown-Up Girl’s Guide to Weight Loss with fellow coach Bridgette Boudreau.
• Spent a summer with flexible work hours and playing with my kids! 
  (For an ex-workaholic, this was as frightening as it was joyful.)
• Launched Square3Coaching.com with fellow coach Nona Jordan.
• Enrolled in Pam Slim and Michele Woodward’s Kick Ass Mentoring to help ramp up my marketing.
• Got mired in a brief, yet uncomfortable, state of stuckness.

Stuckness.

One day, after I rambled about being in this state of stuck, Michele innocently blurted that there is a big mental shift between “becoming” a coach and “being” one.

Eureka.

This phase of career transition is very obvious unless it’s hiding in your blind spot.  Being stuck in the middle of “becoming” something new and “being” that new thing is like having one foot in a canoe and another in a kayak and wondering why it’s tough to stay steady.  You do your thing and look calm on the outside, but your core being is continuously working to not get wet.

This, in a nutshell, is why I believe the art of coaching is so powerful.  With that fleeting comment, the act of “naming the stuck” transported me mentally from the cocoon of “becoming” to the flight of “being.”  The roadblock vanished and I was on a path where I really owned my new career.

Note that it was a path and not a destination.  There’s a lot of “becoming” that I still want to do and I pray that never changes.  There is, though, a relief in “being” where I am in this moment and knowing that is perfect and sufficient.

So for the year to come…

I heard a brilliant coach (Martha Beck) say (dozens of times) that to be great at something, you have to “live it to give it.”  Seek out learning, grow with experience and pass it on.  Which sounds, to me, like rolling “becoming” and “being” into a business plan grounded with integrity.

And that’s exactly what I plan to do in 2010.

It doesn’t escape me that

1. I’ve maintained a 33 pound weight loss through some major life changes. 
   – EVEN BETTER –
2. It never occurred to me that I might regain it again.  My day is no longer eaten up with a battle in my brain around food and my body.**
   – AND –
3. I am still working down to my “natural weight.”
   – AND –
4. I plan to get there (wherever “there” is) in 2010.

It’s a perfect spot for the New Year!

My 2010 intention is to revamp and share all of the tools that are working for me as I use them.  They worked for the first 33 pounds.  They’ll work for you too.

I’ll also share any wild hair experiments that succeed or fail.  I’m human and curious and still get off the beaten path to try a new idea or read a hot book.

My hunch, though, is that the good, sound coaching methods will create success again.  That’s where I’d place my wagers.

What are your intentions for 2010?  How do you plan to Feast?
I’d love to know so I can place my wagers on them too!

** This is, honestly, why I chose to begin with Weight Coaching even though it made more sense (on paper) for me to be a Career Reinvention Coach.*  Undoing my overeating and overworking habits were the first step in following my dreams.  It works.  And I believe in paying things forward that work.

* Part of my “becoming” plan for 2010.  Seems logical to do both!  First get your road blocks out of the way (your over-eating or your over-working or your over-whatever-your-drug-of-choice-is).  Then go after your real work in the world.  And you can do this part before reaching your “natural weight.”  I’m living proof.