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This "Wild & Precious Life"

Awareness is Just Noticing!

11/30/2023

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"Awareness transcends what it is aware of. It is as separate as light is from what it shines upon." 
— Michael Singer
It’s my 3rd blog post in 3 months, maybe it’s 3 times is a charm, maybe this will create a habit of monthly blogging. Or maybe not. 😉 Too soon to tell. What I am noticing as I blog more regularly and plan to write a book (okay, making that public here!) is that lots of ideas are percolating. It feels creative and a little confusing. I definitely have a love/hate relationship with writing. It’s so amazing when the words flow from within me, and I say things that I didn’t even fully know I thought. And it’s tricky when I stare at the blank page and nothing emerges – I can’t quite start, nothing makes sense. The process of writing is a kind of microcosm for so many things. It's about reflecting, and allowing, and noticing, and accepting, and starting, and acting, and persisting, and opening, and connecting ... And that brings me to the concept of awareness. 

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Presence and Possibility

10/31/2023

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"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.
”
​— John O'Donohue from the poem For Presence
There is a lot going on in our world and much of it is not just difficult, it feels downright unbearable. There is so much conflict, violence, loss, grief, pain, and fear. There are no immediate or easy answers. In this time of extreme uncertainty, tension and devastation, it may seem strange to be talking about presence – it’s too woo-woo, it’s too Zen, and we are clearly very far from Zen in our world. Yet I believe it’s exactly the time to be talking about presence.

​It's so easy to be swept into the awfulness of war, mass shootings, and climate disasters. I get caught up in the feeling of helplessness that comes with witnessing horror. My mind goes into overdrive and my body is on high alert; I’m hyper-vigilant.

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The Both/And of Transformation ...

9/29/2023

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​“Change is inevitable, but transformation is by conscious choice.” – Heather Ash Amara
I’m in a season of big changes. In the last month and a half, I moved two of my four children to their next adventure, one son to Colorado State in Fort Collins, the other son to Northwestern University in Evanston. My oldest son has been adulting in Chicago for over a year now, so this was the first summer without a full family vacation. My youngest daughter is now the only one living at home (she misses the brothers). It’s a lot of change and that’s just my family change. In my business I’ve hired a new assistant (welcome Josie!) while facilitating National Women’s Impact Leadership Institute (NWILI), the leadership program Stephanie Shivar and I launched in February of this year, and I am continuing to grow my coaching and consulting practice. All this change has got me thinking about transition and transformation.

Transitions are ongoing, happening in almost every moment. They involve micro-decisions (is now the time to grab a bite to eat or stay the course with plowing through email or writing this blog post or is it time to take the dog for a walk or maybe even get the Wordle done 😀) and while it seems like they should be easy or at least get easier, I’ve found that’s not the case.

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What Are We Waiting For?

3/17/2023

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“The most difficult thing is the decision to act. The rest is merely tenacity.” – Amelia Earhart
Well, I clearly have not been in a blogging frame of mind – it’s been over a year since I last blogged, and I only posted once in 2022. Perfect segue to my topic for this post – waiting – I actually have been thinking about blogging quite a lot over the last year and yet I waited and waited and waited some more. Don’t get me wrong I haven’t been sitting idle waiting to write this post, in fact, over the past year, I watched two of my children graduate (one from high school, one from college), helped my mom move, and sold the house I grew up in. I facilitated Positive Intelligence (PQ) groups, spoke for Women at Microsoft, led a leadership summit for MNCPA, and launched a women’s leadership program, National Women’s Impact Leadership Institute (NWILI) in the Twin Cities. Not to mention continuing the coaching and consulting work I love. 

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Creating Home Within

2/28/2022

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“You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.”— Eckhart Tolle
I re-read my January 2021 blog post as inspiration for my first blog post of 2022 (it's been a long while since I last posted) and I had weirdly forgotten how it ended – with enoughness. Wow, interesting how quickly I forget about being enough and go about my usual strivings for being better, doing more, trying harder. This is a deep rut in the road of my life that I continue to fall into. And to quote Portia Nelson’s poem Autobiography in Five Short Chapters from Chapter III –

​“… There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in ... it's a habit.
       My eyes are open
       I know where I am. …”

​With open eyes I see that it all starts from enoughness.

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One Year (And A Month) Later ...

6/25/2021

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"We must proclaim the truth that all life is one and that we are all of us tied together. Therefore it is mandatory that we work for a society in which the least person can find refuge and refreshment." Howard Thurman

Preface … I wrote this post a month ago – and then I didn’t put it out there. Throughout this month I’ve read and re-read it, edited it, sent it off to a trusted friend and still I’m hesitating. In the midst of my hesitation, I got curious – what is going on, why am I waiting? And I realized that I’m feeling vulnerable – I’m not sure how this will land, I’m not sure it’s “right” whatever that means. So here goes – I’m posting it as I wrote it (plus some ongoing editing), stepping into my discomfort – it feels like a metaphor for what’s next for me as I take a look at my post-pandemic life – what’s next is getting present and curious, breathing, experimenting and living into the moments even if they are uncomfortable and I’m not sure how they are going to go.

Post … What is it about birthdays and anniversaries – there is a ritual and comfort in marking the time and the people in our lives. Late May has always been a busy time for me with my birthday and my late dad’s birthday just one day apart, plus the Memorial Day holiday. This year there was another layer with commemorating George Floyd’s killing and all that that heinous act has brought to light and triggered around the world. How do we sit with the memories and the grief of the loss of this past year? 

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What Is Our Ripple Effect?

1/31/2021

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“Never underestimate the valuable and important difference you make in every life you touch, for the impact you make today has a powerful rippling effect on every tomorrow.” – Leon Brown
With the inauguration and official (and thankfully smooth) transfer of power in the United States, I’ve been thinking about power and impact lately. What does it mean to be powerful? What is the impact of that power in the world? What is our ripple effect? As I’ve learned as a Radical Leader® we are all ALWAYS having impact – the key question is, is it the impact we WANT?! 

Power and impact live within the broader context of connection. Humans are wired for connection, as Mark Nepo says “we have an innate call to find each other and join.” This connection with ourselves, others, the universe and God forms the context for our lives and is the water where the ripples emerge. 

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I Am Here

10/16/2020

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"It seems the closer we get to being broken open, the more rawly we experience the muscle of paradox ... inside everything that is breakable, including us, is the one unnamable thing that is unbreakable." - Mark Nepo
I have never been much of a meditator, in fact I had decided a few years ago when it seemed like everyone was talking about mindfulness that I simply couldn’t do it because my attention continually wandered! Then when I took up a sitting practice as part of Presence-Based Coaching training I was taught that the whole point of meditation is to bring my attention back – that’s the muscle I’m building! I can do that! And once I practiced, I began to see the impact of slowing down enough to be present in my own body, truly with myself at least once a day. This practice stretches time and allows me to be still – it’s changed me and lets me drop down into my own knowing. As Glennon Doyle says in her recent book Untamed  “I can know things down at this level that I can’t on the chaotic surface.”

​

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Breaking Patterns

5/31/2020

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"Certain conditions continue to exist in our society, which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear?" - Martin Luther King Jr. #GeorgeFloyd
I wrote a post for my blog a couple of weeks ago and just didn’t put it out there – I wasn’t exactly sure why. It felt like there was something missing, it didn’t feel complete, it wasn’t ready. And I see now that there was a reason for my hesitation because the world has changed again – as I write I am listening to the constant hum of helicopters and insistent whine of sirens and I’m in a place of rawness. Layers of what I know and patterns of my life are being stripped away. With the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing protest and unrest in my city and others around the country I’m left grieving and unbalanced. This is not my pain directly and yet I feel it. This is not my experience directly and yet I’m in it. I wonder how to show up in new ways for my whole community.


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We Can and Are Being and Doing This Together!

4/5/2020

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"Breathe it all in, love it all out." Mary Oliver
I last blogged on 2/24/20 – that was only 40 days ago (interesting number of days!) and in that time the world has changed before my eyes; I’ve been trying to catch my breath and find my way forward and I’m thinking you might be too. As my 16-year-old son said yesterday – “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life” so true, this is a first, even in my much longer life.

For the second half of the last 40 days I’ve been “busy” – but not busy in the way I have always thought of the word. Typically, my busy is focused on the doing – meeting with clients and colleagues, gathering with friends and family, carpooling, emailing, doing or “reminding” my family members to do household chores, running from thing to thing, fitting in one more task from the list – don’t get me wrong I’ve still been doing many of these things albeit in new ways and at the same time I’ve been busy trying to make sense of what is happening. I’ve been subsumed into the chaos of my thoughts – so much to process and so much time to process and yet clarity continues to escape me. 

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

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