The post Take Time to Look (& Listen) appeared first on Allison Crow.

As a coach- my clients often hear me say:

 

You can accept, modify, or reject

I’ll lay this idea/suggestion on the table, and you can pick it up or leave it there.

The post Do your Leaders Invite You to Self Trust Like Rick Rubin (And Me) appeared first on Allison Crow.

Welcome back! In today’s episode, I delve into lessons I’ve learned from one of my favorite teachers and approaches ~ Gabor Maté and Compassionate Inquiry. 

I explore his method as a facilitator, the importance of gaining consent, his views on addiction as attempts to solve suffering, and authenticity versus attachment. Reflecting on his teachings, I discuss the impact of the “still-face experiment” and how connection to self is crucial in our healing journeys. I’ll also share insights on over-functioning as a coping mechanism and Gabor’s perspective on thriving in a sick world. Join me as we reconnect with ourselves and each other.

00:00 Introduction to Gabor Maté and Compassionate Inquiry

00:45 Facilitation Techniques and Interruptions

02:37 The Role of Consent in Facilitation

03:07 Understanding Addiction and Suffering

06:56 The Still Face Experiment

10:23 Authenticity vs. Attachment

18:01 Overfunctioning and Coping Mechanisms

20:46 The Impact of a Sick World on Emotional Health

22:45 Present Moment Awareness and Self-Connection

The Still Face Experiment: https://youtu.be/YTTSXc6sARg?si=9a1-oDJfE69BESL-

Gabor Maté Website: https://drgabormate.com/

The Myth Of Normal: https://amzn.to/3zoVdmc

Compassionate Inquiry: https://compassionateinquiry.com/

* Visit: Website: /

* Find out more about 1:1 coaching with Allison /coachingwallison/

* Internal Family Systems Coaching and a brief IFS Model Overview /ifs/

* Get your copy of UNARMORED: Finding Home in the Wild Edge of Being Human

/unarmoredthebook/

https://www.tiktok.com/@allison_crow

https://www.instagram.com/allison_crow/

https://www.facebook.com/wildesgesofbeinghuman

The post Lessons Learned from Gabor Mate & Compassionate Inquiry appeared first on Allison Crow.

Episode 204 Heather Doyle Frasier: The Practice of Compassionate Writing

Writer, Coach, Renaissance Woman, Lover of Books
Publisher of Compassionate Mind Collaborative and a singer. 

After having worked in the traditional publishing industry as a development editor,
Heather saw the humanity missing from the industry.

Meet my book coach, publisher, and friend. 

Writing is such a vulnerable raw experience.
Even when you feel like you have this covered something is going to come up during the process that is difficult and challenging. 

Merging her industry experience with coaching based in Compassionate Mind Training,
Heather creates a space and a loving mandate in her own publishing company.

Love, 

Allison

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Resources:

Heather’s Info:

Website Home:  https://www.cmcollab.com/

Offerings for writing and publishing  https://www.cmcollab.com/writing-your-book

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/compassionatewriter

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/cmcollaborative

Get a copy of UNARMORED: Finding Home in the Wild Edge of Being Human

The post Heather Doyle Frasier: The Practice of Compassionate Writing appeared first on Allison Crow.

Hello Humans, I’m here with one of my mentors and teachers Chris Zydel.

She is the Wild Heart Queen of Creative Juices Arts and has a wonderful book out, 
Conversations with the Brush: Wisdom Tales from the Intuitive Painting Heart

Today we’re having a specific conversation about Becoming Crone in the context of being a business owner. 

Crone. Menopause. Reinvention. Business.

Love,

Allison

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Resources: 

CreativeJuicesArts.com

Keep Painting Cards

Conversations with the Brush: Wisdom Tales from the Intuitive Painting Heart

The post Becoming Crone w/ Chris Zydel appeared first on Allison Crow.

In conversation with my coach (and my therapist) – when I tap into the clarity of where I’m pulled to BECOME, the light shows up in my eyes in one instant, and then in the next, I hit the gaping space between where I am and where I want to go…

And I wobble.  

My voice begins to shake, and my stomach gurgles – my brain amps up her stories and excuses.  The doubt fires up and conspires with all the reasons not to grow. 

And my coach, Tony, lifts his hand and vibrates it horizontally where I can see it – to remind me of the wobble that happens when we are attuning to something new.  It’s a visual anchor to remind me to slow down and be with what I call the wobble. While he shakes his hand – he often says, “I’ve got you.” 

The Wobble is a Part of the Human Experience.

This week, I also saw the wobble:

• In a few of my clients, as they saw the responsibility they were pushing away instead of rising in their leadership
• In one of my writing colleagues as she hit a grand new awareness about who she is becoming through writing her story
• In a high school friend who was sharing some of her tender therapy realizations with me over a salad and a bowl of mac and cheese at Panera.  
• In a few of my clients as they bravely navigate becoming their more authentic selves even when the world asks for them to “fit in.”
• In a precious friend who held a hospice vigil with her dying mother. 

The Wobble is Not a Weakness

• It is a sign you are building strength and new muscle memory. 
• It is a sign you are attuning to new experiences.
• It is a sign you are attuning your nervous system to a new state of capacity and calm in the face of doubt and fear.
• It is a sign you are stretching.
• It is a sign of the becoming you are in the middle of. (yes, I ended that with a preposition). 
• If you are a goal person – it is proof you are making progress toward that outcome. 

The wobble, the soreness, and sometimes even big trembles are what live in the space between your atrophy and comfort — and the being or doing you are growing into.  

• How will you hold the wobble In your mind with your thoughts In your body?
• I offer to you to slow down, and hold the discomfort with compassion and strength.
• I plant the seed of remembering, “YES – this is growth, and it’s working,” when the discomfort rises up and starts to freak you up. 
• And finally, I invite you to be the one that says to all parts of you, “I’ve got you.”

“Where have you atrophied#8221; is a question I’ve been considering for myself and offering to my clients.

My wise inner self shows me were it’s time for me to build strength and courage to be with the wobble. Yours can show you too.

And if you are looking for a coach to help support you – one who can say, “I’ve got you,” as you lean in, I can help with that.

Here are a few ways I can support you.

This is the work I am helping my business owner clients do.  These are the conversations in my book Unarmored: Finding Home in The Wild Edges of Being Human. This is some of the focus of my live event Camp Cultivate in May, and this is the foundation from which we do group life and business coaching in my small membership program, Soulies: Self Leadership Society.  

Love, Allison 

The post What to Know About the Place Between Where You are and Where You Want to Go appeared first on Allison Crow.

Grief does not feel like the wisest business strategy lately – Especially as a coach – A small protector part of me -influenced by “perfection only” past mentors, feels this deep obligation to be cheery and “positive.” (Those same mentors always “shoulded” that concise was imperative. Buahahah. This is not concise. NOTHING I do is concise).

 

I know that is just a part of me – a part that wants to be accepted and not rejected. I also know that humans need human leaders and public people who hold space and compassion for the wild edges of being human. This is the work I came to do in myself and for the world.

 

It’s a breeze to hold the pretty center – it’s another thing to lead and BE in the wild edges. Grief, my friends, is not in the shiny center; it is the definition of the wildest and most unpredictable of edges.

 

The grief of losing Leroy is the easiest of grief. I feel more familiar with some versions of this heartbreaking experience. Francis Weller speaks of the 5 Gates of Grief in his book The Wild Edge Of Sorrow(see image).

 

The Grief that is asking for my presence is the 4th Gate. Three recent moments helped me come to this awareness – gifts through connection with others (not with my head in a book of information but through relationships) have helped me SEE clearly.

 

• The first was my ADHD diagnosis 11 months ago and how the symptoms have impacted me + and that I harshly judged and hated parts of me – incessantly trying to FIX these defaults for 49 years. It is wobbly holding those as ISness and considering a path forward where I create accessibility for myself instead of trying to fix something that isn’t broken, only different. 

• The 2nd was the ACA Adult Children of Alcoholics Bill of Rights, a beloved shared with me. Already coming into my own awareness of and recovering from people pleasing, over-functioning, over-achieving + boundaries – this document spelled out losses so clearly – in 20 distinct and familiar points. A gut punch…but also a re-set point. And so much grief in my body. My head already gets it, but my body is coming online and integrating, feeling, and releasing. And my thinking parts have a hay day with the discomfort.

• The third was in a session with my new coach yesterday: I remembered the 18-year-old me – so full of hope and faith, innocence, and ignorance -and physically strong and athletic. Joyful because she didn’t know. She didn’t know because she was young and privileged, and protected. She had so many dreams and so much belief. She was sourced in religion and brainwashed in privilege and ableism. I felt both sorry for her and jealous. I have been beaten down by what has not happened that I had so much faith would in life and work. I’ve been timid around desire and goals. I’ve been too tired to want as I chopped wood and carried water in this last season of ailing parents, ailing dogs, other private family matters never mentioned here, and caring for my business, marriage, mental health, and heart attack.

 

As I compassionately sit with this – and allow myself to be held in the presence of this grief and validation- my body acclimates to the discomfort, and I remember that I am safe- struggling but not broken. And that it is just moments of struggle. It is not my I AMness.

 

And then hope comes back in. There is a way to have hope and faith. I don’t have to go back to being the 18-year-old (or any other version of my joyful-faith-filled selves), but I can cultivate the hope and faith, and strong body of the 51-year-old woman I am. This feels both exciting and crushing to be a beginner all over again.

If you read UNARMORED all the way to the end… you’ll have read the part where the HUMANness reconnects with the spark of Spiritual again, followed by a heart attack; that, for me, was a metaphor for restarting my heart with the electricity of SPIRIT.

 

That’s where I stand today.

Comfortable in my humanness, holding others in theirs, and now ready to build both my physical strength and my faith and prayer – in my own unique way. And ‘strong ankles”. I’ll share that story another day.

 

AC

 

 

 

 

 

 

The post Wild Edge Of Being Human: Musings on Grief. appeared first on Allison Crow.

The post Fuck the Coaching Industry appeared first on Allison Crow.

Earlier this year, in a training I’m taking on Compassionate Inquiry, I first heard Gabor Maté discuss the literal why it is so hard to be authentic.  

Why Because when we are so very young, we have two primary needs: 

• the natural need to be authentic 
• the natural need for attachment (to be connected, loved, and cared for) with our parents/caregivers.  

These two needs aren’t always in competition.  Occasionally they exist parallel.  

But they DO repeatedly end up in competition, and when a child has to choose (consciously or subconsciously) authenticity or attachment, they will naturally, biologically, choose attachment every single time.  

Ultimately our drive to be connected and loved is more innate and stronger than our drive to be authentic.  

This gets repeated and wired into our way of being as young ones, and developmentally, as adults, we have the opportunity to consider (and learn the skills of) NOT disconnecting from ourselves to maintain a faulty attachment by only allowing ourselves the most narrow and constrained expressions.   

Judgment.  Shame.  Rejection.  Isolation.   These hook into our subconscious programming and drive so many of our behaviors and ways of being. These are our coping skills – some obvious and some subtle.  For a long time, they serve us.  They keep us safe and connected until they don’t.   Stepping out of these patterns can be liberating, yes, but can also be excruciatingly uncomfortable.  To our subconscious minds and muscle memories, comfort is safe.  Even if that comfort is miserable.  

Stepping out of these subconscious patterns and building the mental, physical, and emotional skills of self-connection and internal safety take more than a mindset shift; they take experimentation, discomfort, practice, practice, practice, regressions, and more practice, and are certainly helped way more with both self-compassion and community-compassion than the common community “air” of shame, ridicule, comparison, and rejection.

We’ve been taught to turn away, and now it’s time to turn toward your own innocent heart and build the skills of self-connection, self-presence, and, ultimately, self-trust.  

This is the work I teach and coach, and practice.  My coaching communities, podcast, book, and teachings hold the energy and intention of this compassion for your authenticity and for your humanness.  My work can give you a space to build these skills and new muscle memories of self-trust for a better life and better work – for wholeness in your whole heart and being. 

The post Why is it so hard to be Authentic A lesson I learned from Gabor Maté appeared first on Allison Crow.

What’s up?nbsp;I wanna share something.

This is a recording of a video I did last year that popped up in my memories on Facebook and the second I started listening I knew I had to share this content with you because I still see it happen.

I know this episode will help you and hopefully put a gently loving fire under your booty.  

I don’t think a lot of people realize what the direct expense of sometimes getting businesses is and what sometimes the indirect expense of getting business is.

You don’t have to do ads. You can, if you want, you don’t have to do cold calls, but you know what you gotta do?

You gotta show up in the room!

When you’re watching, you’re only getting what you can get, you’re not giving what you can give.

You don’t have to talk about your work but who you be in the room builds trust.

You build trust and it leads to more sales. 

Love,

Allison

The post A Sales Activity that Could Boost Your Biz 65% appeared first on Allison Crow.