by dmackinnon | Mar 5, 2014 | Coaching Tools, Healing Choices
Square Four of Martha Beck’s change cycle is where all your hard work of creating a new life, a new identity, pays off. The learning curve starts to level off and you pretty much know what’s going on and where you’re headed. Your life (or whatever part of it is...
by dmackinnon | Feb 26, 2014 | Coaching Tools, Healing Choices
When you are in the midst of a major change or transition in your life, at some point you have to stop making plans, dreaming, making lists, and goal-setting; you have to actually do something! When you do something in service to your new identity or life, now you are...
by dmackinnon | Feb 5, 2014 | Coaching Tools, Healing Choices
The hallmark of Square Two is hope: You start to think maybe things can be different. You start to see, even though your old life is gone, you can have something different and more satisfying than what you left behind. At the beginning of Square Two, hope comes...
by dmackinnon | Jan 29, 2014 | Coaching Tools, Healing Choices
Over the years, I’ve worked with many clients as they made their way through the change cycle. Some of them called me because they’d been thrown into Square One and needed help navigating their way through Square One and on to Square Two. Other clients called me when...
by dmackinnon | Jan 22, 2014 | Coaching Tools, Healing Choices
The change cycle, which Martha Beck explains in detail in her book Finding Your Own North Star, is about the cycle of change we all go through every time we have a major transition in our lives. It’s a circle, just like the circle of life, even though the four...
by dmackinnon | Jan 12, 2014 | Mindset, Whole Healer
Once upon a time, doctors wrote short notes about their patients so they would remember what they’d been thinking about when the patient was last seen. They’d write down the symptoms, the physical exam, and the diagnosis and treatment plan. Enough so they or one of...
by dmackinnon | Jan 10, 2014 | Coaching Tools, Healing Choices
While change is an inevitable part of every person’s life, the changes that happen are sometimes completely unpredictable. Fortunately, “the process of life change itself follows a predictable course.” (Martha Beck, Finding Your Own North Star, page 243.) Martha...
by dmackinnon | Dec 18, 2013 | Healing Choices, Thought Work
I watched an old Project Runway episode on my iPad a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been thinking about it ever since—not because of the fashions (although some were memorable) but because of the behavior of one of the designers. For those of you who haven’t seen...
by dmackinnon | Dec 12, 2013 | Healing Choices, Process
A client recently told me, “I have to stop giving my power away.” Then she asked me how to do that. “Awareness is the first step,” I answered. The same day, another client told me, “Every year I have such high hopes for the holidays, and then it all goes to hell.”...
by dmackinnon | Dec 4, 2013 | Healing Choices, Thought Work
“Sometimes you have to break a promise to someone else in order to keep a deeper promise to yourself.” I don’t know who said this, or even if it’s a quote. Maybe I’m just paraphrasing. It’s something I read years ago and it stuck in my head. In November, I...
