Online Group: Julia Cameron’s “Walking In This World”

You’ve almost survived the holidays. In just over two weeks you will be putting away the lights and wondering if it’s time for you now. Maybe now is the time to decide what you want to be when you grow up.

Julia Cameron's book is available on my website. Use the link on the right.

Time to make some meaning in your life. To do something creative. Creative work is nothing unless you start it. What’s important in creative work is that you start. And start means change.

Changing your routine is tough. Change alone is even harder. So here’s my plan:

1. Do something to explore your creativity. Something focused. Something you can do by yourself but still have group support.

2. If you’ve heard of Julia Cameron, you know that she wrote a book called The Artist’s Way–the beginning of creativity coaching. Cameron also wrote a book called Walking in This World–The Practical Art of Creativity. Like The Artist’s Way, it is a support guide for creativity. You don’t need to have read one to get something from the other.

3. I’m going to run an online reading group on Walking In This World. The book has 12 chapters. We will cover one chapter a week, starting on January 12. We’ll read the chapter, do the exercise at the end, and discuss what happened, what we thought, how we progressed each week. As a creativity coach, I can also tell you that it’s a good way to experience group coaching and support for change. You don’t have to be an artist, simply want to explore your creativity. Or your fear of your own creativity.

4. I’ll form a Yahoo Group for the class and open a PayPal window so you can pay on my website. The class will meet through the Yahoo Group. You’ll be able to discuss, post images, ask questions. The class will cost $30, but I’m donating $10 of each registration to the Craft Emergency Relief Fund, a fund for artists who have met with some disaster and need help getting back on their feet. Everyone benefits.

5. After you pay, I’ll send you an invitation to join the group. Be prepared for 13 weeks of work. If your first reaction is that you don’t have time, it’s a perfectly normal. We don’t want to do things for ourselves. We don’t want to commit. But this is not about a grinding class. This is about your creativity and finding some support for it.

The only thing you need to do is buy the book–there is a link to amazon.com on my website. (Or borrow it from the library, but you’ll want to write in it.) Still think it’s too hard? It’s your gremlin or negative self-talk. Gremlins kick up and tell you what not to do for yourself. You’ll come up with a thousand reasons not to do this for yourself. There is only one reason to do it: it will help you make meaning in your life.

This class also makes an excellent holiday gift. Combined with the purchase of the book, it’s a wonderful jump start gift for a friend’s creativity. (To keep it simple, give them the check or cash and the link to join.)

Please join us starting January 12 for this exciting, meaningful work that honors and supports your creativity.

–Quinn McDonald is a life- and creativity coach who trains businesses how to communicate effectively with their clients and helps people who don’t draw or write to keep art journals.

Creative Risk. Worth It?

Roadsign: Dangerous but passable

This sign is on one of my favorite motorcycle rides. It seems so much more than a road sign. For me, it was an invitation to do some creative work. Dangerous? Well,  I could make mistakes, I could not like the finished piece. (It’s just a piece of paper.)  It also might be an interesting ride, if I can get over the fear. A little danger can be fun.

A lot of creative work is dangerous, but passable. the ride takes some skill, but that’s the fun.

Journal prompt: In your creative work, what seems dangerous to you?

–Quinn McDonald is a writer and certified creativity coach. She runs workshops and seminars in raw-art journals.

New Class: Explore Your Creativity in 2010

Thinking about New Year’s Resolutions? Nope, me either. There are still a ton of holidays to bake for, shop for, decorate for. New Year’s seems a loooong way off.

New Year’s Day is 26 days away. Less than four weeks. New Year’s usually means resolutions. I’ve been against that idea for a long time. Written about it several times.

Julia Cameron's book "Walking In This World"

No sense complaining unless you come up with a solution. What I don’t like about New Year’s resolutions is that they are too vague, too general, aren’t planned with support, and are forgotten in a week. I also think that when we make a resolution we fear the change. Change is hard. Change alone is even harder. So here’s my plan:

1. Do something to explore your creativity. Something focused. Something that gives you support.

2. If you’ve heard of Julia Cameron, you know that she wrote a book called The Artist’s Way–the beginning of creativity coaching. Cameron also wrote a book called Walking in This World–The Practical Art of Creativity. Like The Artist’s Way, it is a support guide for creativity. You don’t need to have read one to get something from the other.

3. I’m going to run an online reading group on Walking In This World. The book has 12 chapters. We will cover one chapter a week, starting on January 12. We’ll read the chapter, do the exercise at the end, and discuss what happened, what we thought, how we progressed each week.  As a creativity coach, I can also tell you that it’s a good way to experience one kind of creativity coaching. It’s a group coaching, but you’ll discover the kind of support for change you’ll find. You don’t have to be an artist, simply want to explore your creativity. Or your fear of your own creativity.

4. I’ll form a Yahoo Group for the class and open a PayPal window so you can pay on my website. The class will meet through the Yahoo Group. You’ll be able to discuss,  post images, ask questions. The class will cost $30, but I’m donating $10 of each registration to the Craft Emergency Relief Fund, a fund for artists who have met with some disaster and need help getting back on their feet. Everyone benefits.

5. After you pay, I’ll send you an invitation to join the group. Be prepared for 13 weeks of work. If your first reaction is that you don’t have time, it’s a perfectly normal. We don’t want to do things for ourselves. We don’t want to commit. But this is not about a grinding class. This is about your creativity and finding some support for it.

The only thing you need to do is buy the book–there is a link to amazon.com on my website. (Or borrow it from the library, but you’ll want to write in it.)  Still think it’s too hard? It’s your gremlin or negative self-talk. Gremlins kick up and tell you what not to do for yourself. You’ll come up with a thousand reasons not to do this for yourself. There is only one reason to do it: it will help you make meaning in your life.

This class also makes an excellent holiday gift. Combined with the purchase of the book, it’s a wonderful jump start gift for a friend’s  creativity.  (To keep it simple, give them the check or cash and the link to join.)

Please join us starting January 12 for this exciting, meaningful work that honors and supports your creativity.

–Quinn McDonald is a life- and creativity coach who trains businesses how to communicate effectively with their clients and helps people who don’t draw or write to keep art journals.

Creativity Whisperer

Cesar Millan may be the Dog Whisperer, but his method works pretty well for the unruly, leash-tugging creative urge. You know that creative muse–the one you desperately want in your life, but that disappears around the corner and won’t come when called. When it does show up, it runs you ragged. You are off to buy materials and supplies, while your muse stays at home, piling choices on your studio table, and running you ragged with ideas, projects and commitments that you can’t manage.

You are in charge of your own creative output.

The Dog Whisperer has a formula. If you’ve watched the show, you already know what it is. It’s on his website: “Through my fulfillment formula exercise, then discipline, and finally, affection.  As the human pack leader, you must set rules, boundaries, and limitations and always project a calm-assertive energy.”

The “calm-assertive energy” comes first. It’s not about being a control freak, it’s knowing that you are the calm leader of your creative energy and your studio. If you are in control, the studio is not running you and you aren’t searching for pieces of a project. You aren’t forever using the excuse that you have a coupon and heading out to the craft store. You are centered and know what your project is.

You set the rules, boundaries and limitations for your studio. Here are some good ones to start with:

• Know what your project is.
• Know what your project is not. If you are going to create a journal page, don’t worry about creating the whole journal.
• Leave the studio set up so you can begin. Nothing saps energy faster than having to spend an hour cleaning the studio and another finding what you want to work on.
• Put extra materials away. It’s distracting to see unfinished project lying around.
• Set a time to start and be there to start the project.
• If you have an appointment, set a timer to remind you when to stop. You can’t work deeply if you keep having to check on the clock.
• Keep a paper and pencil around to take notes as you work. Once you get to the studio, you will immediately think of “work” that needs to get done before you start. Stay in the studio, make a to-do list. The laundry will still be there when you leave.

The rest of Millan’s ideas work just as well: exercise, discipline, affection.

Exercise is a way to burn off tension in your body. It makes room for creative ideas. While you are exercising, a part of your brain is problem solving. That’s good for your brain and your body. Allow that to happen often, and you will approach a project with eagerness, without a lot of the adrenaline energy that’s exhausting.

Discipline is not punishment. Discipline allows space and time for deep, meaningful work. Discipline allows you to turn off the phone, shut the computer off and head for the studio. Discipline is a set time to work without guilt or fear. Discipline is consistency–knowing what is going to happen. It’s not a wild streak of cleaning the studio one day and spending three hours looking for just the right piece of paper. Discipline is an approach to creative time that includes knowing what will happen–you will work meaningfully, for a set amount of time, on a regular basis.

Affection is allowing yourself to feel good about yourself and your work. Affection is allowing yourself to try and fail, to try something different, to follow a thought or idea until it works or until you know why it doesn’t. Affection for yourself is allowing your growth at your own rate, not at your best friend’s rate. It’s taking the “just” out of your vocabulary, as in, “I just painted this scene.”

Just as Cesar Millan projects a calm, assertive pack-leader image to his dogs, you can project a calm, assertive creative leader image to your muse and your studio. You’ll be surprised at how well it works.

–Quinn McDonald is a certified creativity coach who works with visual and performing  artists to help them find, manage and develop their creativity.

These Aren’t Your Parents’ Values Anymore

Finding a creative project (or a job, for that matter) is rooted in knowing your values.

When I ask my coaching clients, “What are your values?” they immediately reach for the “right” ones–honesty, authenticity, conscientiousness, kindness, spirituality.

Startcooking.com tells you how to load a dishwasher at http://tinyurl.com/yff44ev

“Piffle,” I say and hear a shocked intake of breath, followed by a protest.
“Those words don’t have any juice in them. They mean something vague and colorless to everybody. I want specifics.” I answer. Usually followed by a long silence.

The word “value” has been de-valued. Think about the words we used to think of as powerful: “Passionate” now means “I’m interested in it right now, “Authentic” means “I can’t be the real me, because no one will like the real me, but I wanna have a tantrum right now!” “Abundance” is something everyone else has but not you, particularly money. So we need better ideas for values.

When I ask about what a client values, I like them to use examples. Because what I’m looking for is what is important to them in the way they do their work, creative or not.

For example, you may value the bottom line–love it when people act in quick, decisive ways. Hate people who dither and endlessly consider every crumb of information.

Or, you may value being careful, thinking of a lot of choices, leaving the door open for more ideas, more thoughts. Then, when you do make up your mind, you will have done so after processing information thoroughly.

Neither of these people are wrong. Both have strong values in how they make decisions. But if they work together, collaborate on a creative idea, are in the rolls of “boss” and “employee” they will not form a good match.

While it’s true that we can’t expect to find our perfect matches in a job, a creative collaboration, in a boss, if we don’t find a match for the most important values we hold, we will be miserable. We also need to be able to speak to people who hold different values, because learning to speak to them means listening  and being heard–and being heard is a strong value with almost everyone, although listening is not.

You’ve probably had some thoughts (or heated arguments) on what is “right”–

forks and knives tines up or down in the dishwasher

toilet paper going up over or behind the roll

making important decisions first thing in the morning or when you have had coffee and breakfast

going to the airport 3 hours early to avoid panic or going just in time not to miss the plane so a short flight doesn’t eat up a whole day

Those decisions are based on our values–what we favor, prefer, feel comfortable with. People who hold the value of “big picture” will brush off those examples as not important to a full life. People who hold the values of “details make or break the deal” will think they are important to a good foundation.

To do your best creative work and to have success at a job, you need to choose the job that matches your most closely held values. The place to start is asking the questions, “What are my values?”

–Quinn McDonald is a writer, life- and creativity coach. She helps people sort out their values and use them to their best advantage.

Publishing Your Book: Step-by-Step to Getting “Lucky”, Part I

Right after I celebrated having an acquisitions editor express interest in my book, friends started congratulating me in sort of an odd way.

“You are SO lucky to be able to write a book and get interest right away.”

From school.discoveryeducation: http://tinyurl.com/yzjs7z9

“Aren’t you lucky to get interest in your first book so fast!”

“I could write a book too, but I don’t have time.”

“I’ve written a book, but it’s not ready to go out yet.”

“Ive been working on my book for years. I’m just not as lucky as you.”

You, too, can do exactly what I did, and I’m going to tell you how I did it, step by step. No secrets. No holding back. First, truth in disclosure: I do not yet have a contract. I had an acquisitions editor express interest. There is still the giant leap to acceptance. More about that part later. First, the step by step.

1. Write every day for 50 years. I wrote my first book when I was seven years old, in a spiral notebook. (It didn’t get published.) I’ve been writing almost every day since.

2. Take on different writing assignments. I wrote my first published book when I was 30. It was a “book for hire” deal. I hated it. It wasn’t my idea, it was me writing about someone else’s idea for pay. Since that time, I’ve written for ad agencies, PR firms, financial institutions, insurance companies, huge manufacturing companies, small struggling businesses. I’ve worked at a newspaper, at a magazine, at an editorial think tank. I’ve written for people I agreed with and people I despised. On topics I loved and topics so boring, watching the barometer drop was more interesting. But I wrote. Now, fast-forward to this book.

3.  Find a topic that fascinates, mesmerizes and fires you up. Mine was One Sentence Journaling. (Here’s an article I wrote about it last March.) I have notes that go back six years, but I organized and taught the course four years ago. Each time I taught it, I took notes, listened to comments and changed the course to see if it improved.

4. Do the same thing with two more topics: find topic you really like, develop a course, teach it, listen to feedback, change parts of it until you feel it is a good course that people will pay to attend. (This helps you gauge interest in the material.)

5. Once you’ve taught it in person, teach it online, to make sure you have written exercises that are clear and make sense. Teaching a class online takes about 8 x the length of time it takes to teach the class in prep, set-up, running and comments.

6. Examine the classes and discover a new path to the same information. This is called discovering another perspective. Not everyone learns the same way. You are broadening your audience. As you teach other classes, see what people wish they could develop their creativity to do, what they are missing in their lives, how they can make meaning. Take lots of notes. Be willing to be confused and not know what to do next.

7. Stay open to new ideas. Mine  hit me during morning walking meditation. It was a good idea but it doesn’t hang together with the rest of the material. Be willing to spend months trying out ideas, messing up, failing, starting over, trying, polishing, until one day you are too exhausted to care anymore. You put the idea aside. The next day, in the shower, you have an idea. It fits! You work another three months fitting it into the writing portion.

8. Blend the new ideas and put them in front of your audience. In my case, that was the beginning of raw-art journaling.   Blend the new approach with the old, turning it into the same step, so people who learned visually, auditorially (by hearing), and kinesthetically (by moving),  could learn.  Create a ton of examples. Create a website. Listen to comments from people who like and don’t like your website. Think them through. Be willing to be wrong, to fail again.

9. Develop a class that combines the final version of your idea. Teach this class and all the variations 10 times, each time making changes that improve the class. Listen to feedback, criticism, questions, and people who tell you it’s weird. Ignore the last one. Note on teaching: It will not make you rich. Do not teach to make money. Teach to try out your ideas, to spread your discoveries, to get better teaching. Teaching is not about you, it’s about the participants.

10. Gather up all your notes and create an outline for a book. Do this while running your own business, because no one pays you for this stage. Work on the outline until it looks like information people would pay to play with.

You now have reached the stage where you can write a book proposal. At this point, I’ve spend 50 years writing almost every day, and six years in some stage of book development. I haven’t started writing the book yet, although every shred of it has been taught and evaluated.

Tomorrow: How to write  a book proposal and find a publisher.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer, life- and creativity coach. She has a website for writers who want to keep an art journal, and a website for her business training. Both have coaching sections.

 

Affirmations: Beyond Stuart Smalley

You remember Stuart Smalley.  A character on SNL, played by Al Franken, Stuart Smalley was “good enough, smart enough and by gosh, people like me.” Stuart Smalley may have made you feel uncomfortable, or you may have laughed at the New Age silliness, but you probably wondered  about affirmations.

Facial expressions by isamaras.wordpress.com

Because they work. Yep, if you do them right, affirmations work. Here are basic ways to get them to work for you:

1. Practice before you need them. I know, I know, practicing is for wimps.  How hard can this be? You don’t jump in the car and head for the freeway before learning how to drive; you don’t start learning how to cook by doing  coq au vain, and practicing makes affirmations seem natural and easy, something you want to reach for before you are panicked.

2. Keep affirmations positive. Your brain can’t distinguish between what you think you experience and what your body experiences. That’s why you scream and kick while dreaming, and wake up in a sweat from something that never happened in real life. What you tell your brain is what your brain reacts to–when you believe it. So when you are hiking in the desert and a snake strikes at your ankle, you might mumble, “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” but your brain will feel quite afraid. Good thing, too. You need to be just scared enough to take effective action.

Notice the affirmation I just mentioned: “There is nothing to be afraid of.” It sounds positive, but it is not. It includes the word “afraid” and is phrased in a negative form, “nothing to be afraid of,” which lets your brain feast on “afraid,” –which is will. Negative affirmations are as powerful as positive–with negative results instead. If you have tried affirmations, this is mostly likely why they didn’t work.

A  good affirmation uses only positives to give the brain positives to work with. “I’m choosing to be calm,” “I am brave,” are both positives. It also helps you focus on something you want. Both help the brain provide thoughts in that direction.

3. Keep “Should” away from affirmations. “Should” is a two-by-four over the head. It heaps disappointment into your heart. Because “should” has come to mean “but you didn’t.” So when we say, “You should eat more fiber,” the second part of the sentence is, “but you don’t,” or “but I’m eating a donut.” “Should” is in the vocabulary of the gremlin–the voice in your head that spouts negative self talk. Stop “should-ing” on yourself.

4. Keep your affirmations short. Complicated directions don’t work when you are lost, and they don’t work when you are shaky, either. “I can do this,” “I’m ready to go,” work really well. “I’m ready to give this speech,” “I am happy to be here,” is acting “as if” and it helps you focus on the one important thing.

5. Keep your affirmation specific. Hate giving speeches? Right before you go on, think to yourself, “I am prepared for this speech.” Of course it helps if you are prepared. Your brain will override a big fat lie. Hate that client who’s calling? “I’m a polite person,” will help you be a polite person.

6. Repeat your affirmation. You probably didn’t clean up your room the first time you were asked, and neither do your kids. Your brain isn’t all that different. Repeating an affirmation several times calms the body as well as the spirit. Repetitions are used in rallies, prayers, and rituals for an excellent reason–they work.

7. Keep working on them. Some affirmations work better than others. If you have read this far, you are hoping they will work for you. They might not have worked in the past, but with practice, they will work for you.

Samples of affirmations you can use to develop your own

• I can get through this
• I am strong
• I will be kind (instead of “I won’t get angry.”)
• I choose what is healthy for my body
• I feel grateful for. . .
• I believe in myself

© Quinn McDonald, 2009 All rights reserved. Quinn McDonald is a freelance writer, trainer,  life- and certified creativity coach. She teaches people how to write and give presentations. She also teaches people who can’t draw how to keep an art journal.

A Shadow of Who We Are

We see ourselves in certain ways–”the patient one,” “the black sheep of the family,” “dependable.”  Maybe other people don’t see us that way, they know us in ways they experience us, instead of the ways we experienced our roles in families.

A cut-out gate and its shadow. © Photograph by Quinn McDonald, 2009

A good way to know who we are is to watch our shadow. How to we show up in the world? How do we represent ourselves? Even then it’s hard. That shadow we cast in real life on a sunny day doesn’t look exactly like us, after all. It’s hard to guess when the angle of the sun distorts our height, what we look like in a mirror.

You can catch a glimpse of what people think when you tell a story or give an example. “I’m not that extroverted,” you say, as prelude to a story of you dancing  on the sidewalk, and you notice people exchanging glasses. Uh-oh, they knew what you didn’t suspect–you are an extrovert.

An interesting exercise it to watch how people react to you–smile, cringe, lean forward, hug. The person we are when we are rushed or in a place where we don’t care about our behavior–in the grocery line, among strangers–is often the real us.

The gate below caught my eye. In the angle of the sun, it casts almost a duplicate as a shadow. Had I been there earlier or later, it would have looked different.

Journal prompt: Walking down the street, I turn and look at my footprint. I’m wearing ______, but my footprints are _______.

–—Quinn McDonald is a life- and certified creativity coach. She teaches people how to write and give presentations. She also teaches people who can’t draw how to keep an art journal.

Make a Decision: Tap Into Your Emotions

Anne was trying to decide whether to stay in a relationship or go. There were plenty of reasons to leave–she didn’t feel heard, she felt belittled, her boyfriend didn’t want to go for counseling and didn’t want her to go either. On the other hand, she had spent a year in the relationship and had put effort into making it work. Her boyfriend was funny and made her laugh, even at herself.

To stay or to leave? Would leaving seem like giving up? Was she being a quitter instead of someone who worked out problems? Was staying in a bad relationship a sign she didn’t care about herself? Couldn’t admit she had made a mistake and move on?

Anne was tortured with her choices. And she kept piling up more reasons without knowing which direction to take. Watching this was torture. I suggested she might feel comfortable writing Carolyn Hax, who writes the syndicated column, “Tell Me About It” for the Washington Post.

“I should be able to sort this out by myself,” Anne said. “I don’t know how come I can’t make a decision.”

Sometimes making a decision is tough because with the decision comes the consequence. Either staying or leaving brings on a pile of consequences that you choose the instant you make the decision, and often you are afraid of consequences you don’t know about yet. So you put off the decision, and begin to drown in your own life.

I gave Anne a coin. “Heads you stay, tails you leave,” I said.
“You’re kidding, right?” she said, looking at me as if I were nuts.
“Well, this is the simplest way for you to get to a decision. It takes thinking out of the problem. Let’s see what happens,” I said.

She flipped the coin. Heads. Anne broke into tears. Hurts and agonies months in the making poured out. I handed her a Kleenex. At the end of the sobbing came the sentence, “I can’t stay. I’ll die if I stay.” As soon as she sobbed it out, Anne had her answer. By coming up with endless possibilities and choices, Anne has supressed the answer she already knew. By taking thinking out of the pattern that she had developed, she suddenly collided with her emotions and knew the answer she had been suppressing.

Anne left her boyfriend, and although there were many tears and a few hard days and nights, over time she knew the decision had been right. Looking back she saw that a lot of her indecision was rooted in not wanting to change because change made her feel as uncertain as she felt in staying.

It’s not the tossing of the coin that helps you make a decision, but the emotions that follow it. Emotions often inform clear decisions, because they allow you to focus on what is important to you. We often block our values because we are scared of honoring them. The coin toss works, even if you know about its purpose, because it make your own feelings clear to you. Our ability to provide many scenarios of the future blocks a clear view sometimes, and tapping into raw emotions provides the only clear view. A coin toss will put you in touch with what you are hiding from yourself. The coin isn’t leading you, the coin gives you permission to see one decision and gauge your choices instead of balancing one pro with another con.

It clears the way to sorting through the issue at hand instead of the fear of making a decision.

—Quinn McDonald is a life- and creativity coach. She knows that choosing can be as hard as admitting a bad choice. And she loves the thought of the sufi poet and fool, Mullah Nasiruddin, who said, “Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.” (c) 2007-9 All rights reserved.

Why Your Coach Makes You Work

Adults learn by doing. Most people don’t learn much by simply reading or listening. We forget about 80 percent of what we hear in eight hours after hearing it. That’s why I am not enthusiastic about computer learning that guides you through blocks of texts and asks questions. You’ll get a lot of answers right an not remember a thing.

A mandala to color from www.bigfeature.org/mandala-octa-ring.html

Jill (not her real name, this is a compilation of conversations from several clients) hasn’t reached many of her goals, and wants to quit coaching. While clients always decide when to leave, I like to discuss the reasons for leaving and make sure the client has some tools for the weeks ahead.

I asked Jill what she could use from our coaching sessions.

“Well, I really didn’t get a lot out of it. That’s why I’m leaving.”

“What was missing, Jill?”

“I don’t feel better. I still have all the same problems. I’m going to have my chart done by an astrologer. I think my Mars is in retrograde.”

“What steps will you take if Mars is in retrograde?”

“I don’t know. But it will explain how come I am not solving my problems.”

“Jill, I did notice that you didn’t do your homework very often,” I said.

“Well, you didn’t make me, you never yelled at me, so I thought it was OK not to,” Jill said.

“You often told me you were sick or too busy with work. Did you not get anything out of the homework?”

“I don’t think I should have to do homework. It takes time. I’m paying you to help, and then you give me homework, ” Jill said, suddenly explaining more than she had in weeks.

“Homework is part of coaching. Most of the coaching understanding comes between the sessions, because you work on your homework and have flashes of insight.”

“But I hired you to tell me what to do.”

“No, Jill, we talked about that early on. I don’t give advice, and I can’t fix people because I don’t think they are broken. Our talking leads to discoveries that you want to follow. Homework allows you to experience what you discovered in coaching and act on it.”

“Well, but it’s a lot of work, and I don’t have a lot of time. And I have anxiety attacks at night, so I watch TV to calm down, and I can’t do it then. I don’t understand how come you just didn’t tell me to read a book or something.”

“Have you read a lot of self-help books?” I asked.

“Sure, and you don’t even know a lot of the authors that I’ve read. I wonder why you don’t read all those books,” Jill said.

“Do those books help you?” I aked?

“Well, yes. Of course. They are smart people. Those books help millions of people.”

“Jill, what change have you made and kept for more than three months from one of those books?” I asked.

“Well, I don’t remember. But that doesn’t mean the books weren’t good,” Jill said.

“Those books could be very good. But to change your life, you need to choose a goal, break down the steps to get there, and work on it regularly. Working with a coach keeps you in motion toward those goals. The responsibility of doing your homework works better if you have someone to report back to.”

“I still think if I’m paying you, I shouldn’t have to do homework, too,” Jill sighed.

“I’m not an emotional or spiritual plumber that you call when your plans spring a leak, Jill,” I said. “I can’t come in, patch up your heart and soul and send you off to be happy. Being happy or fixing your problems is work you have to do yourself. I can help you look at goals, show you how to weigh them, find out what success and happiness mean to you, and ask you questions that will result in understanding as you work with stumbling blocks, but I can’t patch up your spirit. I’m not a magician, just a coach.”

In the weeks to come, Jill visited different spiritual workers, hoping for an answer. But for Jill, even an explanation is not an answer. Working with a coach is a mental and spiritual exercise, work you have to do for yourself. You have to care enough about yourself to want to help yourself. A coach is a guide, a map-reader with a compass. If you don’t know where you are heading, you won’t notice when you get there.

--Quinn McDonald is a life- and certified creativity coach. Read more about her coaching practice.