TransformAble Coaching and Consulting
  • About
    • Client Testimonials
  • Services
    • Coaching
    • Consulting
    • Facilitation & Speaking >
      • Layers of Leadership
  • Blog
  • Connect
    • Positive Intelligence
  • Events
    • THRIVE Retreat

This "Wild & Precious Life"

Shifting from Comparison to Gratitude in the Spot of Grace

5/19/2025

0 Comments

 
Picture

“This is a hard lifelong task, for the nature of becoming is a constant filming over of where we begin, while the nature of being is a constant erosion of what is not essential. Each of us lives in the midst of this ongoing tension, growing tarnished or covered over, only to be worn back to that incorruptible spot of grace at our core.” ― ​Mark Nepo 
This month I’ve been playing with letting go of comparison – noticing it, celebrating the noticing and letting go. This is an opening to trust and transformation. And for me it’s a bumpy road – sometimes it feels impossibly hard to offer compassion to myself and what it is instead is unpracticed, it’s new. As much as I know what the comparison of my judge takes from me, it’s still so solidly conditioned that it’s my go-to way in the world. And that way has lots of downsides and really no upside. It’s funny, it logically makes no sense and yet the familiarity of it brings some hint of comfort that keeps inviting me back. What I’m learning is it’s not only for me that I’m practicing something new. When I let myself be who I am fully and celebrate this, that’s an invitation to those around me to do the same. When I step into the joy of perfectly imperfect with loving arms open to whatever emerges it’s contagious. It’s that invitation into love and that starts within us. It can’t be found within someone else no matter how great our relationships are or within some object no matter how amazing that thing is, it’s only available when we come back to our own selves. And this happens with presence and awareness first. As Mark Nepo tells us it’s our “incorruptible spot of grace at our core.” 

​
What I’ve realized over the last couple of weeks as I’ve paid attention is that this habit of comparison is dug into my way of showing up partly because I’m a really good student (hence the MA and PhD 😉). I take things in quickly, I love to make new connections (both between ideas and people), and I work to apply what I’ve learned. This way of being and learning has served me well and it also has me constantly looking outside myself for the requirements.​

Read More
0 Comments

Self-Compassion Minus Comparison Equals Peace

5/5/2025

0 Comments

 
Picture
“Each person is born with an unencumbered spot, free of expectation and regret, free of ambition and embarrassment, free of fear and worry; an umbilical spot of grace where we were each first touched by God. It is this spot of grace that issues peace.” ― ​Mark Nepo ​
May is here! I love May, it’s my birthday month, it’s time for blooming flowers after the April showers (or in the Twin Cities the drama of tornadoes that just missed us last week), the temps are warming in Minnesota (some of the days)! And most importantly it’s time for new beginnings and growth. It’s a perfect, or should I say perfectly imperfect, time to blog about compassion, especially self-compassion. This is my learning edge. And I’ve blogged about self-compassion before as an opening for healing ourselves (talk about grounded grace!) and as a way to be our own best friend (talk about coming home to ourselves!). Self-compassion is at the heart of my 2025 commitment to come home to myself, offering grounded grace and love. So this is my work this year. And I have to say, it’s so simple and still not at all easy for me. As I’ve shared before, my default is to judge and compare myself, and my judge is super talented at finding ways I don’t measure up! In fact, she’s taken it on as a full-time job and she’s killing it. 😂 ​

Read More
0 Comments

The Freedom and Fun of Just Noticing

4/15/2025

2 Comments

 
Picture

“Awareness transcends what it is aware of. It is as separate as light is from what it shines upon.” ― Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul​
After some time spent noticing my noticing with pure awareness this month, the first thing I’ve realized is that I don’t practice the pure awareness thing very often (oops, see, I’ve made a judgment). Noticing is almost automatically linked to what’s missing, wrong, not enough, too much in my mind. And this kind of noticing produces “shoulds,” lots and lots of requirements for being okay and enough. The “shoulds” in my life lead me down the well-worn path of worry and anxiety paved with thoughts of “not okay” and “something’s wrong.” And this cranks up the anxiety, especially when it happens in the middle of the night. So, when I turn pure awareness toward these “shoulds” without judgment, just noticing I can check out what’s there. What’s behind and underneath the “should” here? This question is a window into me, the observer me who is deep in my soul and doesn’t change with how old I am, what I’m wearing, how much I weight, who I’m with, what I do, who likes me or doesn’t, or even what mistakes I make. 

Read More
2 Comments

Let Awareness, NOT Judgment, Set You Free

4/1/2025

3 Comments

 
Picture
“Try seeing your world and yourself this way, eyes open to whatever is before you, mind free of dichotomies. Are you good or bad, fragile or tough, wise or foolish? Yes. And so am I.” ― Martha Beck
This month I’m focusing on the second layer of Leading from the Inside Out, Awareness. I’m in the midst of writing the Awareness chapter of my book. I’ve blogged about it before, in fact, I’ve blogged about it quite a bit, which makes sense because it’s a tool that I use and sometimes misuse or at least misconstrue. What’s got my attention right now is how I conflate awareness and judgment without even realizing it (you could say that I’m unaware of this conflation much of the time) and the impact of this combination is usually anxiety. When I began my journey of coming home to myself (without knowing that’s what I was doing) almost 9 years ago I was stuck in a spiral of negative thinking. In terms of the Positive Intelligence (PQ) work that I do, my saboteurs were having their way with me. 

Read More
3 Comments

Coming Home Is the Practice of Letting Go

3/19/2025

4 Comments

 
Picture
"Now I see that the journey was never meant to lead to some new and improved version of me; that it has always been about coming home to who I already am."
― Katrina Kenison
Last weekend I had a chance to retreat for my soul – what an amazing experience curated by my dear friend Steph Smith Founder of The Listening Field: Spiritual Direction at Birdwing Estate owned by another dear friend Joanna Engstrom. It was a time to really practice what I’ve been blogging about this month, slowing down! And I got to do it with a group of wonderful women some of whom I knew and others who I know now and I’m grateful to call my soul sisters. My heart is still full and I see now that the fullness is all about the coming home moments I experienced and still hold close. So what does it mean to come home? That’s what I’ve been wondering about this month.

​Home is a word that I often associate with the space I live in and it's actually so much more than a location. When I think about what makes home home for me – it’s not the building itself or even all the things held within this structure I call home. It’s who is here and that includes me. Together my family (our pets) and all who spend time with us and I create home together in this place that I live. I know it’s possible to be at a house and not feel at home and I’m incredibly grateful that my house is my home. So what is home if it's more than a space? It's connection to ourselves, to each other, and to the world we live in. And connection is all about being present right now. So basically the whole idea of coming home begins and ends with presence.

Read More
4 Comments

Presence Is about Slowing Down and Coming Home

2/28/2025

0 Comments

 
Picture
"May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of
soul.
Take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek
no attention.
Be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.
​May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder. "
Excerpt from For Presence ― John O'Donohue
​This month I’m thinking about presence. This is not new for me since my Presence-Based Coaching (PBC) training in 2018. Present is what I aspire to be in my work, with my clients, with my family and friends, even and actually most importantly, with myself. It’s simple but not easy to be in the moment. It’s a micro choice of being here, right now, right where I am. And our world is full of distractions from presence – the multitude of devices, the multitude of news stories, ads, websites, the multitude of text messages, the multitude of emails (don’t get me started, my multitude is more than most) all being thrown at me all day long. And then there’s the multitude of to-do’s on my list, the multitude of meetings on my calendar that aren’t distractions at all, however they can be invitations to step away from presence especially when I get in my head and my judge starts prattling on about me, others, what's happening.

Not only is all of this keeping me jumping and worrying but also my brain is keeping me on autopilot which for me is about busy, busy, busy – fit it all in, get it all done and while you are at it don't forget to do it perfectly and make sure everyone is happy too (yes, I do KNOW all that is impossible and yet, that's where my default brain takes me regularly). Every moment we each face an onslaught of sensory, intellectual, and emotional input. Our brains decide what deserves attention and that can depend on many factors, most of which have been baked in since childhood. Old stories and habits that run our lives take us down paths that are well worn. That's definitely where I get stuck, the doing it right, making everyone happy. Phew, it’s a lot!

Read More
0 Comments

Living into Grounded Grace

1/30/2025

2 Comments

 
Picture
"To hear
another’s voice,
follow
your own voice,
wait until
that voice
becomes an
intimate
private ear
that can
really listen
to another." 
​Excerpt from Start Close In ― David Whyte
We are a month into 2025, beyond the typical time for Happy New Year greetings. So now it’s time for stepping into what’s next – visioning has been dreamt, planning has been done, goals for the year have been set, at least that’s all supposed to have happened according to the “experts” – it’s time to bring it to life. And I’m all in on that in so many ways. I get excited about the what’s next, I love the possibilities of it. What I don’t love as much is the uncertainty of it. With possibility comes the fear and uncertainty of what may or may not be. This is where I can get myself stuck if I’m not careful. That shows up in different ways, sometimes I over-plan (I hardly ever over-vision, I love possibility and yet I go down the rabbit hole of how rather than staying with the beautiful, exciting picture of what.). Other times I avoid the unknown and stick with what I do know, the habits I’ve built over a lifetime. It’s the same thing really, staying in a place of stuck rather than breathing and moving forward to the place of possibility.

​
My year started with a magical long weekend at Wild Rice Retreat in Bayfield, WI. I co-led a women’s retreat for connection and restoration with my friend and amazing yoga instructor + financial advisor, Ahndi Fridell – we called it PAUSE! It was a time for staying still on purpose, not avoiding, instead being with ourselves, each other, and nature for three days all in. What I learned from this experience is that we need this time, whether we know it or not, devoted time for connecting with what really matters. Time to slow down, take a breath, and see what unfolds. I was grateful to witness the power of creating a connected community in precious moments with the 11 women who joined us. The gift of space and time there led to transformation.

Read More
2 Comments

What About Manifesting?

12/31/2024

0 Comments

 
Picture
"Your job is not to figure out how it's going to happen for you, but to open the door in your head. And when the door opens in real life, just walk through it. And don't worry if you miss your cue because there's always doors opening. They keep opening."
​― Jim Carrey
It’s New Year’s Eve 2024 and I’m getting my monthly post published under the wire, “just in time.” With the US Thanksgiving holiday so late this year, I’ve been practicing a lot of “just in time” – just in time house cleaning, holiday baking, gift shopping and giving, meal planning. The just in time thing works for awhile for me and then I start to feel the effects. Which for me looks like waking up in the night with to-do lists and worries running through my mind, fitting one more thing in as I’m late to whatever is coming next in my schedule. And then there’s the combination of procrastinating and just in time action. I wait until I really, really can’t wait any more and then I do something more quickly, possibly less carefully than I would like just to get it done! It relieves the pressure until the next thing that I'm avoiding shows up.

​The week before the holiday break as I was busy procrastinating and "just in time" doing, I woke up in the night, thinking about and literally hearing the words “expectations, requirements, and judgments” in my head. It was a mantra like Dorothy’s Wizard of Oz mantra of “lions and tigers and bears, oh my” – instead it’s “expectations, requirements and judgments, oh my!” 
Like the lions, tigers, and bears for Dorothy, expectations, requirements, and judgments are my fears and worries about how I’m measuring up or more likely how I'm not really measuring up.

Read More
0 Comments

Revisiting Ease: What it Means to Lean into Perfectly Imperfect

11/30/2024

6 Comments

 
Picture
“Wholehearted living is about engaging with our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion and connection to wake up in the morning and think, ‘No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough.’ It’s going to bed at night thinking, ‘Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.”
― 
Brené Brown
It’s the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend – this day always feels like extra space and time to me, it’s after the hustle and bustle of the big feast (which was oh so good this year albeit quieter with only one of our three sons at home) and then the energy of Black Friday. It’s a bit like gaining an hour at the beginning of Daylight Savings time. I can give myself permission to sit back, do a puzzle, read a book, play a game. It doesn’t have to be go, go, go on this day. It feels like ease to me and coincidentally this is my word of the year (see my January blog post). I was reminded of this word, ease, during my morning yoga class last week when the teacher brought up effort and ease. It got me thinking of how I’ve done with living into ease this year. I have to say it hasn’t come easily. 😀 In the balance of effort and ease, I’ve spent much more time and energy on effort than I have ease, there has not been much balance at all. There’s always one more thing on the to-do list, one more email to write, one more item to pick up at the store, one more meal to cook, one more problem to solve. ​

Read More
6 Comments

Community Starts within Us All

10/30/2024

2 Comments

 
Picture
“We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results.” – Henry Melville
Community has been on my mind and heart this month. I've had amazing reminders of the beauty of authentic community alongside devastating examples of how fear divides us. A couple of weeks ago, I basked in the joy of community with our 2024 National Women’s Impact Leadership Institute (NWILI) cohort (thank you to Stephanie Shivar for partnering with me to start and grow this program) – we shared appreciation and gratitude with each other. There were belly laughs and tears, all of it. Even as I am taking in the love of this community, my heart continues to break with the wars around the world along with the politics of fear underpinning the 2024 election. And what I know to be true through it all is that we are meant to be in community. It matters for our health and well-being, it matters for our work and leadership, it matters for our souls. 
​
Community is the outer layer of my leading from the inside out framework and for me it’s a non-negotiable. We are all wired for community and my wiring is especially sensitive, or maybe it’s tight.

Read More
2 Comments
<<Previous

    Author

    Caroline Cochran, PhD is a Certified Presence-Based® Coach and a Leadership Development Consultant with over 25 years of experience.

    View my profile on LinkedIn

    Categories

    All
    What I'm Learning
    What I'm Noticing
    What I'm Up To
    What's Inspiring Me
    What's My Impact

    Archives

    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    March 2023
    February 2022
    June 2021
    January 2021
    October 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020

      Stay Connected

    Subscribe to Newsletter
Explore your possibilities.
Book now
2124 Dupont Ave. S. Suite 102, Minneapolis, MN | 612-804-7665 | [email protected] |The nature photos were taken in Kauai, Olympic National Park, Asheville, Switzerland, and Austria | ©2022 by TransformAble
  • About
    • Client Testimonials
  • Services
    • Coaching
    • Consulting
    • Facilitation & Speaking >
      • Layers of Leadership
  • Blog
  • Connect
    • Positive Intelligence
  • Events
    • THRIVE Retreat