Martha Beck with Bonnie Olson.
I am a Martha Beck certified life coach. I am a mother of two, a wife and a dental hygienist for many years. I team up with my black pug, Georgie, to do therapy dog work. I am a mentor at our local elementary school.
I came to coaching after several difficult years in my own life. I had been the support person for my family for a long period of the time. I had lost myself by living worried, preparing for the worst and not taking care of myself for years.
When I was growing up, my Mom (and she is a wonderful Mom), did a great job teaching me to worry. I believed that worry was my job as a mother. I was on automatic pilot believing that my worry could affect or prevent some disaster. I was full of fear much of the time. This went along pretty well for a lot of years until my children grew up to an age where other people outside of family affected their lives, sometimes for the worse and they began to have some big problems that I could not worry away or prevent. I began to have physical symptoms associated with stress that were very uncomfortable and even painful. My level of stress had reached an all time high. I was breaking down physically from my beliefs about ways to react to life. I did not want to continue to suffer so began to look for a way out of stress, sadness and what had become loneliness too. The more afraid I got, the fewer people I shared my worry with. Once I researched and read, I realized that my experience and struggle is not so different from others. I read several of Martha’s books and the stories she told deeply resonated with me. The tools I have learned through coaching school transformed my life and I am so excited to help other people who have been suffering too.
The greatest lesson I have learned from coaching and being coached is that I can help the most important people in my life by living the life I was meant to live. What this means is that I am now living a life that enriches and inspires me. I now allow myself to gravitate toward the things and people that give me the greatest joy. The best part of this change for me is, that by me taking care of myself and not worrying about others there has been an enormous positive affect on the people I love. This positive change stuff is catchy! The more I live life authentically , the more others are doing the same by my example. This is how it works for all of us.
Coaching has inspired me to do many new things. I have always loved animals and took part in an equus workshop this year. The idea is that animals, especially horses, mirror our own emotions, so that we can see what we are putting out into the world emotionally and energetically.
Click here to read more about my experience in the equus workshop and my week-long camping trip into the Wyoming wilderness between Cody and Yellowstone National Park in July 2012.
