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Category: Coaching
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Can Sensory Coaching Help Me Create A Better Life?
Why Would I Need Sensory Coaching?
In the last post we looked at how life coaching could help you create a better life. In this post we’re going to look at what sensory coaching is, and why you might need it. First, a couple of questions..
Do You Know How Many Senses You Have?
Does that sound like a daft question? Let me promise you, it isn’t.
Most of us are under the impression that we have five senses, but it’s a misguided impression. It’s currently agreed that we have eight senses, with some scientists being of the opinion that we have as many as thirty three.
Are you surprised by that answer? Ok, let’s move on to the next question…
Do You Know What Sensory Types Are?
If you’ve spent any time on this website then you’ll know what sensory types are. If you haven’t, here’s a quick overview:
There are four sensory types:
- The Avoider
- The Seeker
- The Sensor
- The Bystander
These types speak to how we receive and process sensory information. The story they have to tell about who we are can be life-changing.
You can begin to unravel the mystery of your sensory type by taking The Sensory Types Quiz. This will give you an indication of your main sensory type, at the time you take the quiz, but it’s not the whole story, not by a long chalk.Unlocking the secrets of your sensory typing is a fascinating exploration of who you are, that can bring about highly emotional aha moments of self-discovery.Your Sensory Experiences Are Unique To You
We’re all unique individuals, even identical twins are very different people (believe me, as the mother of a set, I know this first hand!).
But even though we know this, we tend to assume that other people will have the same sensory experiences as us. For instance, if you look at a red flower, you’ll probably assume someone else will see exactly the same thing as you. Maybe they will, or maybe they won’t. We have no way of telling because we can’t see through someone else’s eyes.
We might agree that the flower is red (unless one of us is colour blind) but the exact shade may differ according to our unique sensory equipment. A prime example of this would be the dress argument that took the internet by storm a few years ago.
It’s not just differences in the rods and cones in our eyes, or our olfactory receptor cells that affect our sensory experiences though. The ways in which our brains process the 11 million bits of information that come our way every second, is unique to us.
I did the maths (with a little bit of help from a very excited Mathematician) and discovered the astounding fact that there are, potentially, as many as 65,536 possible sensory typing combinations!
Are you starting to see why the person standing next to you probably isn’t experiencing the world exactly the way you are?
Why Does Any Of This Matter?
Simply put, it matters because you matter.
Too many of us go through life thinking that there’s something wrong with us because we’re different to the people around us. Too often people assume that we’re being awkward because we struggle with something that doesn’t bother them, when it’s simply part of what makes us unique and wonderful. We’re all different, and that’s something to celebrate!
Self-knowledge is empowering. Having the language to express ourselves is liberating. Uncovering your sensory wiring, and finding ways to work with any aspects of it that cause you problems, can be life changing. That’s not hyperbole, it’s simply fact.
What Is Sensory Coaching?
Sensory Coaching is a form of holistic, transformational life coaching which explores how you can create a better life by embracing your senses.
Holistic because it encompasses the whole person, transformational because it has the capacity to transform your life experience.
The Sensory Coach’s toolkit includes not just coaching modalities, but also a range of holistic therapies including, but not limited to, aromatherapy and sound therapy. It’s a cutting edge experience that you won’t find anywhere else.
Can Sensory Coaching Help Me Create A Better Life?
Absolutely! There’s a but though… it will only work if you’re prepared to take action. If you want a magic pill that will create a better life without any effort on your part, sorry, but it’s just not going to happen.
Honestly, simply taking the Sensory Types Quiz can improve your life, if you’re open to what it will show you about yourself.
In the next post I’m going to share my Tree of Transformation outline with you. This is a five step cycle that you can work through yourself, or with a coach. If you’re ready to do the work, you’re ready to create a better life.
Embracing your eight senses and your sensory type, will ensure it’s a life that’s tailored to your needs and desires. You deserve a bespoke life, not an off the shelf, cookie cutter life.
Remember, you can get started by taking the sensory types quiz and then downloading the relevant report (you’ll have access to that once you finish the quiz).
Don’t forget to come back later in the week to discover how The Sensory Coach’s Tree of Transformation™ can help you take the next steps to that better life you crave.
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I Want A Better Life, Can Life Coaching Help?
‘I want a better life.’ How many of us have muttered those words? Plenty, I’m sure. But how many of us ever do anything to make it happen?
Before we can answer the key question about whether or not life coaching can help, I’m going to describe what coaching is, and what it isn’t.
What Is Coaching?
There are a lot of misconceptions about what coaching is.
I regularly see people, most usually in business groups, discussing the expectations they have for any potential coaches they might work with.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, these same discussions look very different in groups populated by coaches!
In the business groups, most of the posts talk about wanting a ‘coach‘ who has done the thing they want to do, and who can supply them with the steps they need to take to achieve the same results. This usually focuses on how much money they want to make from their business.
In coaching groups, people want recommendations for coaches who aren‘t afraid to go deep, to ask searching questions, and to fearlessly hold them accountable.
Therein lies the difference – coaches know that a coach is there to help you to uncover the very best of yourself. They are there to help you find your own answers, to call you out on your own bullshit, and to lead you to take actions that move you along your chosen path.
What Coaching Isn’t
A coach is not a teacher, a mentor, or a consultant – although there are coaches who fulfill those roles too.
Your coach doesn‘t need to have done the things you want to do, to be able to coach you.
A business coach who isn‘t earning huge sums of money can still coach someone who aspires to earn, or already earns, millions.
Let me reiterate this point with an example:
I know of someone who is an excellent (and celebrated) sports coach whose coachees regularly achieve great results. These achieve these results even though their coach has never physically participated in the sport they are being coached in.
It’s All About You
This is because coaching isn’t about the coach, coaching is all about you, the coachee.
Let me share an example:
I recently coached another coach through a block she had around her business. During a 30 minute session, we dug into what was holding her back; this lead her to some aha moments that enabled her to reframe the problem. We were then able to move on to exploring what actions she could take in the next week that would move her beyond her current sticking point. By the end of the session, she had a clear way forward, and the change in her energy around this issue was clearly visible.
When she messaged to say that she‘d taken the actions discussed, and as a result, the outcome she‘d wanted was now a reality, the win belonged completely to her. It wasn‘t my win.
It‘s certainly true that I helped her, but I didn‘t do the work for her, neither did I tell her what to do. I simply helped her to find her own solutions.
This is a much more empowering place to exist within. If you simply follow someone else‘s instructions, you don‘t have the same degree of ownership of the outcome.
Ownership of the Solution
Consider a time when you‘ve worked out a problem for yourself – how did you feel?
Now compare that feeling to how you felt when you simply followed someone else‘s instructions.
It‘s not the same feeling, is it? You don‘t have the same level of emotional connection to the problem you didn‘t solve yourself. It doesn‘t have the same energy behind it.
Now you might think it doesn‘t matter how you achieve the desired result, just so long as you achieve it. Sometimes that‘ll be true, but generally only for things that don‘t matter very much to you. For the things that you consider important, having ownership of the solution will give you so much more than an easy win. You will come away with a new level of faith and trust in yourself, which is so much more empowering than simply being given the answers.
Think back to your school days – did you ever turn to the answers page at the back of the textbook, before you‘d tried to solve the problem? Do you remember the way you felt when you wrote down the answer?
I guess that you most likely felt hollow. There was no sense of satisfaction.
Conversely, I know for a fact that my coachee had a huge grin on her face for days after she‘d had the result she worked for. She had that sense of pride and satisfaction that only comes from achieving something through our own efforts.
Don’t Confuse Coaching With Teaching
This is not to say that there isn‘t a place for teachers, mentors, and consultants. Of course, there is! The point I want to make is that confusing coaching with these things is a fundamental misunderstanding that does a disservice to both coach and coachee.
Unfortunately, because coaching is an unregulated industry, anyone can call themselves a coach. There are many great teachers and consultants out there who perpetuate this misunderstanding, by referring to their services as coaching, when it isn‘t. Maybe they think coaching sounds sexier than teaching, I don’t know, but the two things are very different.
The Psychology of Coaching
It’s very important to note that coaches are not therapists.
Having said that, there is often a degree of crossover between coaching and therapy. The key difference is the point of focus.
Therapy is generally focused on the past, with the key aim being to improve the client’s now.
Coaching may touch on the past briefly, but it’s a much more future-focused experience, with the client’s now acting as a springboard to the future.
To Be Coached You Must Be Coachable
What on earth does that mean?
It means you need to:
• be willing and able to face difficult questions with curiosity
• be prepared to follow through
• be able to take responsibility for your actions
A coach‘s job is not to spoon-feed you, but to help you uncover how best you can feed yourself.
At the end of the day, a coach cannot help you if you‘re not ready to help yourself.
I Want A Better Life, Can Life Coaching Help?
The short answer to the original question then, is that if you’re prepared to:
- dig deep
- do the work
- be coachable
then yes, life coaching can help you to create a better life.
In the next few blog posts we’ll explore how The Sensory Coach’s framework for transformational coaching can help you do just that.
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The Do Over – 5 Lessons From a Disappointing Year
You know those years where nothing seems to go to plan? 2019 was definitely one of those.
It’s all too easy to get disheartened, and fall down the dark hole of despair, which is exactly what I did, in a big way, for the last few months of the year.
Then along comes the hope of a fresh start in a new year, and, whatsmore, a whole new decade! It feels exciting, refreshing, and filled to the brim with hopeful anticipation of all the things you’ll create and achieve.
But before you know it January is over in a whirl of illness and domestic dramas, and you haven’t actioned the tentative plans and dreams you’d pencilled in to your fresh, new planner.
You see the new year spiralling away from you in the same way the last one did. The feeling that you’re letting time slip away from you grows, and you start to feel anxiety and panic eating away at your equilibrium.
Sound familiar?
How do you move beyond the self recrimination?
How do you pick yourself up, dust yourself down, and keep going?
How do you motivate yourself to carry on when it feels like you’re wading through treacle?
1.Use An Encouraging Mantra
On the front page of my planner I’ve written:
‘I didn’t come this far to only come this far.’
Every day when I see this, it reminds me that a lot of time, effort, energy, money and sacrifice has gone into becoming the person I am today.
I have a lot to give back, and it serves no one, least of all me, to keep it hidden away in my mind and countless notebooks.
Dory in Finding Nemo had ‘just keep swimming’.
Julian of Norwich had ‘all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.’
What will your mantra of encouragement be?
2. Celebrate Your Wins
I can’t stress enough how important this is!
Get into the habit of doing a monthly review, focusing your attention on your accomplishments.
When I looked back over 2019 and wrote down all the things I’d achieved, I was shocked.
It felt like I’d done nothing, but it turns out I could list some pretty big wins, including building a new website, upgrading this one, and holding a live chocolate making workshop.
We tend not to give ourselves enough credit.
We forget that, over time, small consistent steps add up to an imperceptibly long distance.
What do you need to celebrate?
3. Give Yourself Enough Time
Very often we over estimate what we can achieve in a certain amount of time.
This can lead to self recrimination if we fail to meet our own deadlines.
The danger here though is that, if we give ourselves too much time, we can procrastinate to the nth degree, never achieving our goals.
I’m not generally a fan of the notion of balance, perhaps because my troublesome vestibular system means it’s something I’ve always struggled with (a sensory pun for you there!).
However, in this instance, balance is definitely something to aim for.You want to give yourself enough time to get a task done without burning out, whilst not giving yourself so much time you never get the job done.
Self honesty is where it’s at – where might you be tricking yourself about time?
4. Use Your Tools
When we’re in the throes of despair, we can forget to use the tools we have at our disposal.
For this reason it’s important to get into a regular self care routine.
The old saying ‘a stitch in time saves nine’ couldn’t be more appropriate here.
When we use our tools regularly, they don’t have a chance to get rusty.
When we perform regular maintenance jobs, things don’t tend to get out of hand.
It’s much easier to spend a few minutes every day maintaining our equilibrium, than it is to claw our way back from burn out.
What do you need to dig out of your toolkit and start using?
5. Ask For What You Need
This one is HARD! The fear of rejection can hang over our heads like the Sword of Damocles.
Yes, asking for what you need can be scary, but it can also be incredibly liberating. And here’s something about it that you might not have considered before…
(Most) people love to help. It makes us feel good to know we’ve helped someone else. So by asking for help (what you need) you’re also giving someone else the opportunity to feel good. Win win huh?
And if they say no, that’s ok. You can survive the perceived rejection. Because you’ve been implementing the other 4 lessons, you’ve become much more resilient and can take it on the chin with greater ease.
What areas of your life do you need help with?
These 5 lessons won’t magically transform life overnight, but bit by bit they will make a big difference.
And one day, when you’re looking back over your monthly reviews for the year, you’ll see just how far you’ve come, without even realising it.
If you enjoyed this post, why not share it?
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Poetic Problem Solving with Collage
Back in 2014 a friend reintroduced me to the joys of collage via the medium of vision pages. The premise is along the lines of a dreamboard,but using cut out words, not just images.
This was an enlightening moment for me because, even though I’m a very visual thinker, vision boards had always left me cold. But now I could shift words around on a page, and add pictures if I wanted to? Woah! And then a remembering whisked me back through the mists of time to 1987.
I had done this very thing, almost 30 years before, on the notice board of my 5th form, boarding school prison cell.
I also remembered all the scrap books I’d loved making – how had I forgotten about something that brought me so much joy?
Over the past 5 years I’ve utilised this process more and more. It’s become a kind of meditation for me. It’s helped me to home in on recurring themes, which is a big part of what lead me to the creation of The Sensory Coach.
I tend to create new pages around the time of the full and new moons each month. Sometimes I’ll just feel the urge to create a page outside of those times, if there’s something niggling away at me that I need to get out. Like journalling I suppose, except…. not!
This afternoon, as I was creating a page, I was pondering how the process works. This was connected to a question a friend had asked me a couple of days before:
‘Tell me how your idea creation process works.’
(She’s a coach, and these are the sorts of deep diving questions us coaching types love to ask.)
My response?
‘Erm… I dunno, it just sort of happens!’
Which is sort of true, but given she said she would keep me in mind as an Ideas Consultant, I figured that I should probably give this process a bit more thought. And I do love me some thinking!
Ready for a bit of Hansel and Gretel breadcrumb trail following?
I started the 100 days project at the beginning of April, having chosen the loose theme of Sensory Soul Art. It sounds a bit pretentious given I’m not an artist, but the container gave me scope to explore, and it’s been another enlightening process.
Last week I watched a documentary on Netflix called The Creative Brain, which gave me inspiration for this piece of art play.
When I was writing up the caption for it on instagram I said:
‘…The ways in which seemingly disparate input can form connections over time seems, to me, a bit like Ready, Steady, Cook! (Anyone remember that programme?) You start off with a bag of random items and have to create a dish or two that brings them all together.’
This afternoon, as I was cutting out appealing words and phrases from magazines – keeping the left brain occupied so that the right brain was able to come online to free associate (or as Daniel Pink puts it: ‘The left hemisphere analyses the details; the right hemisphere synthesises the big picture.’) – these rememberings were sifted to the front of my awareness:
- Me and my dear friend, Lisa, playing with magnetic poetry whilst waiting for an appointment with The Emergency Poet.
- Playing on the CSI game and using the lab assembly table to piece bits of evidence together.
- The book A Discovery of Witches in which the main character, Diana, problem solves by imagining all the elements of the problem as puzzle pieces on a white table. She waits for them to rearrange themselves so that she can see the whole picture – she later discovers that this is one form her magic (as a witch) takes.
- References from the book Refuse to Choose about ‘scanners’ – a term the author uses to describe people like me who love learning more than knowing.
- The knowledge that movement helps to promote mental activity, leading to faster cognitive processing.
Me and Lisa, 2 years ago, playing with magnetic poetry These recollections prompted me to consider some things about myself:
- I’m a collector (some might use the term hoarder) of things, ideas, experiences, memories, information, random junk!
- I thrive in visually busy spaces – not busy with movement or sound though, that’s exhausting.
- I have a ridiculously retentive memory.
- I’m a voracious reader.
- I’m a listener.
I appreciate that there are a lot of words here. This is one of the things that puts me off blogging, because all of that up there, took moments to whizz across my brain and form into the completed puzzle. Trying to type it up into a piece of writing that makes sense however…. hours!
But the way my brain works has value. A value I’ve really not appreciated for most of my life, which has been a shocking waste of my abilities frankly. It’s about time I started to vocalise my strengths, and demonstrate the level of background work that goes into this ‘just sort of happens’ process.
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The collection of cuttings I started with -
The finished piece
My friend Kate told me that marketing is like painting and decorating: there’s an awful lot of preparation work involved that you don’t see. It’s the same with my idea generating process. It’s a culmination of every sight, sound, smell, taste, touch I’ve experienced in my life, colliding with the information that you’re giving me, when you’re asking for my input. As was said in the netflix documentary:
‘Creativity doesn’t mean inventing something out of nothing, instead it’s about refashioning what already exists.’
David Eagleman
The creation of a vision page is a tangible demonstration of how my idea generation process happens.
The words and images that stir your senses will be particular to you, how you arrange them will be a result of your very personal thought processes and associations. That’s why moving pieces of cut out paper around is a worthwhile use of time. It’s how you create poetry like this piece I came up with earlier today:
everyone deserves a
wild love
held in softness
adorned in perfumeThat’s how you can solve problems, work out what your underlying passions are, and just have a bit of fun with glue and paper, like you did when you were a child.
Give it a go and let me know how you get on. If you want some guidance, then might I point you in the direction of my friend Angela? She’s running a programme on Patreon called Resonance, where she’ll be teaching her process.
I must apologise for the dreadful formatting, I just can’t get to grips with the new wordpress block system.