I’ve always been fascinated by who we are and why we are.
For many years I loved a personality test, a type assessment, a quiz - any way to help me find out who I was and what made me tick.
Most of them were useful in some way - helpful lenses that showed me where I fit in someone else’s framework - but even more useful has been building my own personal understanding, from the inside out.
Have you ever realised you’re completely off track?
Recently a good friend and I were lost on the South Downs. We had set out to do a lovely 4.5 mile loop and ended up doing a hot, hilly and exhausting 9 miles.
It was not intentional!
We’d followed the signs, and it had looked pretty straightforward, and yet we got lost more than once. Even my beloved Maps app couldn’t help.
As we stood at the edge of a field, covered in scratches, hopelessly willing the path to emerge it was a brilliant example of how easy it is to veer off course.
Especially if you’re not paying attention (there was a lot of chatting), or if the sign you’re looking for just doesn’t appear and you keep going anyway (!).
I’ve had a lot of first sessions recently. Meeting someone for the first time, exploring working together, and asking lots of questions about what’s needed for us to get set up well.
Alongside the purpose of the coaching (the what), is the partnership and the practicalities (the how).
This is such rich territory! Each of us has our own recipe of things that help us work at our best - and we’re all different.
There’s a particular joy when you achieve something special.
Perhaps a plan comes together, a long-held goal is realised, or something you hadn’t anticipated springs to life. Or you pause to look back and realise you’re exactly where you hoped you could be.
The sense of achievement can be enormous - and accompanied by a whole range of other emotions. Relief, delight, exhaustion, excitement, joy, sadness that something has come to an end, even though that’s what you wanted!
So it helps to take some time to bask in all of it, to let it wash through and over, to settle into it. To reflect on and notice all of the parts and acknowledge them. To celebrate the moment and the work that went into it before moving on to what comes next.
Which can be surprisingly hard to do!
This photo captures one of my favourite memories from 2025.
It’s a selfie of me and my lovely husband Stu, taken in a pub garden in Grasmere.
It was the first time in a while that we’d been away just us - no teenagers, no dog - and this sums up the feeling of the experience.
When I look at it I smile - I can see our partnership, the fun, the team spirit, the ease and the love.
One simple question has made an enormous difference to my life, my relationships, my choices - and a lot of conversations with my husband: “Can I talk at you for a bit?”
I know now that when I’m stuck or need to work through something, I do my best thinking and feeling when the words come out of my head.
Often, I really don’t know how I feel about something until I say it out loud, and it can take me by surprise.
I’m so glad that I know this now, because it’s not a neat process.
It can take some time and lots of verbal circles - creating a messy first draft and then revising in real time. I need to follow the thread without worrying about it making sense.
And for that, I need a patient witness to listen and let me talk it out. To be OK with me talking AT them for a bit, rather than WITH them.
I’ve done a lot of coaching sessions recently around communication.
How do we understand what someone else is saying?
How do we make ourselves understood?
There can be a lot of emotion when it feels like it isn’t working - frustration, anger, disappointment, bitterness...
Both people are trying their best. But often the conversation doesn’t bring out the best in either of them.
“How do they prefer to communicate?” is a great question to move past the challenge and find a way forward.
Over lunch the other day my husband asked me this question and it was brilliant.
Because I couldn’t answer it.
I had been bemoaning the lack of a perfect solution in a few areas of my life - not big challenges, more small niggles that didn’t feel quite right.
I really had to stop and think.
And it turns out that was exactly what I needed to do :-)
I’ve spent a good few hours working 1:1 with someone over the last few weeks, supporting them, coaching them, helping them prepare for a big life event.
And I’ve had almost no idea what they have actually said.
My son has been prepping for his German A level speaking exam, and I’ve been the person listening to him as he practices out loud.
It’s helped something really click - that coaching, or supporting someone in any form, is so often about focusing on the person and not the problem/topic/situation.
