Joanne Mallon's Opposable Thumbs

Why I'm supporting Home-Start with my book

I'm really excited that the publication date for my book about toddlers is only days away - it should be available before Christmas, in paperback and Kindle formats.

And even better news is that a chunk of the royalties will be going to Home-Start, the UK's leading family support charity.

What I like about Home-Start is that it's a very practical, hands on charity - volunteers visit families in their homes and give them whatever help they need, even if it's just playing with the kids so an exhausted parent can have a rest. It's very much a 'coaching' approach, since the volunteers don't tell the families what to do, they support them to help them find their own solutions.

The Home-Start service is free and relies on volunteers. These volunteers are heroes should be applauded for what they do.

However, cuts in government funding have led to some Home-Start schemes having to close. It's a shame when familes dealing with stress, illness and disability isn't a priority. I feel honoured to be supporting these families with my book. I wish the government felt the same.

Toddlers: An Instruction Manual was always designed to be a very practical book, full of real life advice and experiences that any parent of an under five can use and apply to their life straight away. So I think it's a good fit with Home-Start. If you buy this book you will be helping yourself, and other families whom you will never meet, but who will appreciate it. That's a good thought, isn't it?

But if you don't need a book about under 5's (and I appreciate that not everyone does), but you're feeling in a charitable mood, here's an easy way to do something about it. Last week I went to the launch of a new service called Give as you Live. This service means that every time you do online shopping with a major retailer (they've signed up all the biggies) a proportion of what you spend goes to a charity of your choice. You don't pay any extra, the retailer makes the donation by giving up a slice of its profits.  Given that it's suposedly one of the biggest online shopping days of the year, if you were going to spend it anyway, you might as well do it the Give as you Live way, and donate at the same time. You've got nothing to lose, whilst your chosen charity has everything to gain.

Half term, half working? 5 ways to combine freelancing with school holidays

 

So it is half term and I am hiding in my office. One of my children has scarpered to a friend's house. The  other is silently  arranging his dragon collection. I've got them well trained. If you're a parent who works from home, and those pesky schools insist on closing from time to time, how do you combine the two? This is what I find helps:

• Limiting the work you take on
  I will do some writing work this week, but I don't schedule coaching calls when the children are about. You need 100% concentration for coaching, and that's hard to give when somewhere, off in the distance, a child is calling you to come and show them how to do the Time Warp.
• Accept that you will get less done
  It would be daft (not to say unfair on everyone involved) to assume that it will be business as usual during the school holidays. Keep your goals modest and hopefully your stress levels will do likewise. 
• Do at least a little marketing
  The search for new work never really stops. I am aiming to get out an issue of my newsletter this week, and will also drop in and out of Twitter. Often it's when you're not looking for new opportunities that they drop into your lap; so weirdly, weeks like this can often be when you're at your most attractive (work wise, that is). Plus a bit of low level marketing will help you feel like you've not let things drop entirely.
• Find a job the whole family can do
  Admittedly this is easier if, like me, you are a parenting journalist, and more challenging if you are a welder or brain surgeon. On Wednesday we're off to a Cupcake Masterclass, and I'll be filming and writing about the event. I've sold it to the Juniors as a fun day out at Fortnum & Mason, when really they are acting as my unpaid interns. So essentially I am lying to, and exploiting, my children, which I think is good preparation for their adult lives. And since there's cake involved, they won't be too fussed.
• Take a break yourself
  Your average freelancer can be the worst sort of employer, demanding weekend working and no real breaks away from the screen. Take some time off and blame the kids. Plus when you do get back to work, it will seem a lot easier than entertaining bored offspring ever was.

pic: Flickr, db photographs

 

 

Filth, music and art - inspirational reading for weirdos

A million years ago, when I started in coaching, I tried to read as much mind/body/spirit-type inspirational guff as I could. Every week I would go back and forth to North Library off the Holloway Road and plough my way through Self Esteem for Beginners, Confidence for Idiots, Motivational Shit for Horrible People etc.

Whilst there are some gems amongst the reams of books like that (particularly anything by Wayne Dyer or Susan Jeffers), eventually they do pretty much start to cover the same old ground.

So lately I have been finding inspiration in other places. Here are three non fiction books I've enjoyed recently. They were all gifts from my family, who, as it turns out, know me better than I thought they did.

Just Kids by Patti Smith is the story of the author's growth as an artist and performer, and her relationship with fellow artist Robert Mapplethorpe. I can't recommend this enough, it's a beautifully written, captivating portrait of the emergence of two dynamic, inspiring souls.

Life lessons to learn from Just Kids: Follow your bliss and get a cool haircut. If Bruce Springsten offers to write a song with you, snap his hand off.

 

 

 

Hooleygan: Music, Mayhem and Good Vibrations by Terri Hooley and Richard Sullivan is the story of Ireland's Godfather of Punk, and the founder of legendary record label, Good Vibrations. If you know anything about Northern Irish music, you will have come across Terri Hooley. I used to go into his record shop, Good Vibrations, to sniff the vinyl. And Norn Irn being the small world that it is, I also used to babysit his daughter from time to time (not in the shop). It's quite a funny read, as you would expect when a major part of the cast are drunken lunatics. And yet somehow the music kept coming. It's the Belfast bomb nobody warned the rest of the world about.

Life lessons to learn from Hooleygan: John Peel was right all along. Don't worry if all your shit gets burned by yobbos, at least there'll always be Teenage Kicks

 

Role Models by John Waters - How fantastic would it be if the legendarily scurrilous film maker John Waters  was to write a motivational tract? I don't think he's in a hurry to, so this is the closest we'll get. Role Models is a collection of essays about people Waters admires, ranging from Johnny Mathis to the scariest barflys you ever did encounter. It's random, upbeat in the face of perversity, and engaging in its charm. You don't have to be slightly deranged to like this, but it helps.

Life lessons to learn from Role Models: Again, follow your bliss is a major theme here, along with the importance of personal grooming. It's OK to be filthy, as long as you do it with verve and style. Dullness, and not making an effort, are the worst crimes of all.

Great reads, and I recommend them wholeheartedly, Dale Cooper Thumbs Up all round. Now, what to read next? Thinking about ploughing through this list of 50 Essential Non-Fiction Books for Weirdos, whaddya reckon?

Life and Career Coaching Special Offer

I realise that this blog has been mostly about journalism and the weirdness life's chucked at me, but as well as that, my life and career coaching business still rumbles on.

Recently I've had a special offer running for my newsletter subscribers, offering 3 coaching sessions at the reduced rate of £200 (normally it would be £275, so you're saving nearly 30%). In a lot of cases, 3 sessions will be enough to give you the kick start that you need. Given that I work with people in the media, I have to keep schtum about who my clients are, but trust me, what they achieve is extraordinary.

Since UK VAT is going up in January, and with it the price of everything, I can't run this offer beyond the end of 2010, and I will be reviewing fees in January 2011.  If you'd like to take up this offer but aren't a newsletter subscriber, you can always subscribe to the free coaching newsletter first, then claim the offer.

So if you're booking sessions for this offer, you can still take them from January onwards, but they need to be booked and paid for by 31st December 2010. And the quickest way to do that is by emailing me on joanne@medialifecoach.com And if you're not sure whether coaching is for you, the FAQ section of my website wil help you decide.

I've Arrived!

So the new term has started and I'm back to work. Coaching work that is - the writing work kept going all summer. When you're writing a feature you can take multiple breaks to stop your children murdering each other, but there's not really a window for that when you're coaching a client.

And to mark the new coaching term, how thrilling to see that the Daily Mail has run a feature slagging life coaching off. Really, I'm surprised it took them so long. About seven years ago I coached a journalist for a month, for a feature that was due to be in the DM. Except it got pulled, because the journalist's experience was so good that there was nothing to criticise. And you can't have a DM feature without griping, can you?

So the gist of this latest piece is that the reporter took a fast track coaching course, and is critical of the fact that it offers qualifications in only six days (blimey that is a bit fast, I can see his point), and says: "the odd thing about life coaching is that you know little about the person coaching you". Well no, you don't unless you ask, which is why it is important to ask questions if you're thinking of hiring a coach, like

• What sort of training did they do?
• How long have they been coaching for?
• What sort of people have they coached before?
• Have they coached anybody in a similar situation to you?

A decent coach will give you honest and full answers and won't put any hard sell on you to hire them. And if you do hire them, you'll be supporting the ranks of the people who've been slagged off by the Daily Mail. Fine company indeed.

The Invisible Book and Why Time to Write is a Necessity, Not a Luxury

When I'm working with new coaching clients, we start by looking at the kinds of things that they're not doing, but would like to be doing. And this is when The Invisible Book often appears.

The Invisible Book is the book you haven't written yet - you know it exists, but no one else can see it yet. Yet still, you know what it's about, how the cover will look and how terrible the reviews will be. 

Time to write (the lack, thereof) is usually cited as the reason why this book stays invisible and only exists in your head. We all have busy lives, with work, family and dull chores claiming our time. Writing time seems like too much of a luxury and slides down the list of priorities.

On a practical basis, this is easy to address: get up a bit earlier, arrange childcare, turn your back on the sink full of dishes and you'll have carved out an hour to write. 

But the mental blocks are often still there, in that most people in possession of The Invisible Book just can't justify taking the time out of their lives to write. Since it's such a luxury, it's hard to convince ourselves that we deserve it.

But let me tell me tell you one very important fact about this book: it may be invisible, but that doesn't mean it's going to disappear.

So if you are one of those people who knows you have a book within you, you might as well get on and write the bugger. It's not going to go away, it's just going to piss you off more. The voices of the people you're going to write about won't go away, they'll just get louder and start waking you up at night.

And don't think that the time you spend in doing so is somehow wasted. Think of how much it pains you not to find time to write now. Once you stop resisting the urge to write, it's like setting off a rocket under the very arse of your life, and everything is boosted.

Writing is an unstoppable urge - just look at all the blogs out there. Nobody is forcing or paying those people to write, and yet they do it anyway. Having a book within you is a lot like having a child within you - they both need to be born at some point. Only with the book you get to control the labour pains. So why make it tough on yourself?

If you take the time to write, the ripples will spread out like warm water. It might not earn you money or clean your sink, but it will leave you feeling calmer, more fulfilled and happier. Doesn't that make it worth it?

I Dreamed a Dream

I came across a coach this week who wasn't sure how to handle a client who dreamed of becoming a writer for the NME. She felt that this was an unrealistic goal. My response was: Why is that unrealistic? The next generation of NME writers has to come from somewhere, why shouldn't it be this particular person? I specialise in coaching people in media, so I often see former clients in the paper or on TV, living their big dreams. Because really, big dreams only stay dreams if you don't back them up with any action.

I feel it's vital for a coach not to judge what a person's dream might be. Instead, help them take the practical steps and say "OK, how are you going to make this happen?". You've got the rest of the world to dampen your enthusiasm, you might as well rely on a coach to believe that you can do it. In times like these, when many are in the gutter, it helps if at least one person is looking at the stars.

I think it's true to say that, in some quarters, coaches have got a bit of a reputation of being airy dream-mongers. So maybe it's good that some coaches will take a view on how practical a client's goal is. As I am at heart a very practical person, though also an airy dream-monger, this is how I approach it when a client has a particuarly earth shattering dream:

• Establish the essence of the dream
  A person who says they have a particular dream, doesn't always want that exact thing. Sometimes it's not so much that a person wants a Ferrari, but that they want whatever that represents to them (freedom, escape etc). Once you've established what this essential quality is, then you can look for easier ways to get that into their life straight away, without having to save up for the big red car.
• What's the ecology of the situation?
  What else is going on in their life that this goal impacts on? How much time and other resources does the client have to bring to reaching their goal. Who else is affected by this? For some people, without dependants or debts, a goal of jacking in their job and travelling the world is entirely achievable. For others it might take a leetle bit more arranging.
• What will they do to start the ball rolling?
  Not what should you do, or what might you do, but what will you do, starting this week. You don't need a map of the whole journey, just take a first step and the next will follow. If a client starts squirming or making excuses at this point, then we retreat a little and look at what is really going on.

What do you think? Does a coach have a responsibility to support a client's goal, no matter what? Should we say anything if it all feels a bit far fetched?

Crystal Ball Time - Coaching Predictions 2009

This time last year I made some predictions about how the coaching industry would develop in 2008. It was all a bit tongue in cheek but the gist of it was that coaching as a profession was on the up. So how did all of that pan out?

1. Coaching ripples continued to spread, with coaches appearing as characters in TV shows and plays. Often comedy characters, I wonder why that is?
2. Generalist life coaching did indeed seem to evaporate, with new coaches realising that you need to have a focus if you want to have a business. There's even a cake coach now, though sadly he's using cake as a metaphor and not as actual cake.
3. Clients are now expecting more of their specialist coaches. Which is all fine and dandy. What's the point of having in-depth knowledge of a sector if it doesn't inform your coaching in some way?

And then the economy began crunching to a halt, taking many businesses with it.

Coaching-wise, the Autumn is usually fairly busy for me, but not last year. It's as if people were paralysed. This year so far is a totally different story, with many new clients coming forward. I think that coaching is one of those businessses that will thrive in a recession, because we are in the business of managing change and helping people improve their situation. And for many people, the only way is up right now.

So what next for coaching in 2009?

There are now so many options for how you communicate with clients, by the time you blogged, Tweeted, broadcast, sent out your newsletter etc, you would have no time left for actual coaching. So whilst embracing webtech, we'll still have to keep an eye on old fashioned skills like time management and preserving resources. Yes, that means recycling your old jokes.

And don't forget we're all off to the moon next holiday!

Some Confidence Tips (and a Few Words About Pot Plants)

Regular coaching clients will be familiar with the pot plant speech. No, not that type of pot plant.   The pot plant speech is my theory of confidence.

I feel that many people treat confidence as if it were some kind of indoor plant.  They hope that if they nurture it, it'll grow, and maybe one day they'll tuck it under their arm and take it out for a walk.  So they say things like "If I had more confidence I would quit my job/write a book/join a gym/insert scary action of choice".

But confidence doesn't work like that.  It will not grow independently before you do things.  It grows whilst you do them.  So if you are waiting until you're more confident to do something, then your best course of action is probably to take a deep breath and do it anyway.  And as you do, your confidence will increase.

The word confidence derives from the latin meaning 'with faith'.  So it's not about doing things enormously well, or making a big splash neccessarily.  It's about having faith in yourself, trusting that you can deal with whatever life chucks at you.

Some things I believe about confidence

• It never goes in a straight line. Your confidence levels will change with time. 
• The people who appear most confident on the outside are often the most crumbly inside.
• Confidence exists in little pockets throughout your life.  The trick is to access the pockets when you need them.
• Children are born with 100% confidence.  When did you last see an unconfident newborn baby?  Babies don't know enough about the world to be afraid of it, so they have no reason to feel unconfident.  You were born confident, therefore you have it within you.  It may be buried, but it hasn't gone away and you can find it again.

Ways that you can increase your confidence include:

• Take some exercise.  It doesn't much matter what - the point is that you take your focus out of your head and into your body.
• Uplift the externals.  New haircut, clothes you love, nice surroundings - all of these things will have a huge effect on how you feel internally.  Put it another way - sitting around in your oldest jogging trousers with a hole at the knee ain't exactly going to put a whole lot of zipadeedoodah in your day.
• Do something you didn't think people like you did.  So if you think of yourself as being perfectly erudite, go to Butlins.  If you think you're quiet, start singing.  I am a fairly calm person, so I have recently taken up BodyCombat, which involves lots of shouting and strangling imaginary adversaries.  Does me the world of good.
• Talk to a human being.  It's terribly retro, I know, but hiding behind email and text messaging doesn't neccessarily help your confidence.  It might feel like it's keeping you safe, but so much falls through the gaps when you avoid proper conversations.
• Keep a success journal - Even if it's on the back of an envelope, write down your personal successes - the things that made you smile today; the things you're glad you've done; stuff you're proud of having produced.  It'll soon add up. 
• Do something new and (preferably) slightly scary every day.  Today I made a phone call I was avoiding, tomorrow I will eat a papaya etc.  That'll stretch your comfort zone pretty fast.

What are your best confidence tips?

Client Seeks Coach: GSOH Essential

Later tonight I'll be taking part in The Coaching Panel radio show.

Under discussion tonight is the topic What does a potential coaching client need to look at when selecting a coach?  I think it's an important subject to look at so that we know what the client's looking for,to see if you're the right person to help them get it.

I have already blogged about what to think about when you're hiring a coach, and all of that still stands.  In addition, other factors to consider:

• What type of person do you want your coach to be?  Similar to you, or very different? For example, I can't imagine hiring a coach who was substantially younger than me, but that's what happens when you're an old duffer who can't send text messages.
• What kind of background do you want your coach to have?  Clients come to me precisely because of my media background - they want someone who speaks their language and understands the culture that they're operating in.  People come into coaching from a huge variety of backgrounds, and this will affect the coach they are.
• What kind of budget do you have to put into your coaching?  Coaching fees range from nowt (for trainees), through to giant numbers that make your eyes go squiffy.  Experience doesn't come cheap.
• How do you want to be coached?  Face to face; telephone; some coaches even work by email.  Personally, I am a big fan of telephone coaching.  Because the anonymity is heightened, the coaching call can be a bit like a confessional, and it's not at all unusual for clients to voice thoughts they've never told anyone else.  Plus it saves oodles of time - no schlepping across town in the rain for a face to face appointment.

So what do you look for in a coach?

Ooops - gotta go.  Radio show to do.