Why Am I Your Clarity Coach?

When someone sits down with me for a session, one of the first things I often hear is, “I don't know where to start.”

My answer is usually very simple: start where you feel comfortable.

You do not need to arrive with your thoughts organised. You do not need to know exactly what the problem is, and you certainly do not need to arrive with a solution. That is part of the reason you are there. You may have one particular issue that you believe you want to discuss, or you may have several things happening at the same time and have no idea which one deserves your attention first.

You may also wonder whether we are going to talk about spirituality or spirits. The answer is that we can, but we do not necessarily have to start there. Some people come to me specifically because they want to explore their spirituality. Others are curious about it but are much more interested in the academic, philosophical or scientific questions surrounding spiritual experiences. Some people do not want that conversation at all. The session starts with you, not with my spiritual beliefs.

I Listen Before I Start Looking for Answers

Once you start talking, I listen.

I listen and take notes. I try not to interrupt unnecessarily because I want to understand how you see your own situation before I begin asking you to look at it differently. Sometimes I will ask a question because something you have said needs clarification. Sometimes I will write something down and leave it alone for a while because I want to hear what else you have to say before deciding whether that particular point is important.

While I am listening, I am also paying attention to patterns. I pay attention to timelines, relationships, important ages, decisions, changes in behaviour, repeated situations and the way you describe particular periods of your life.

I am not creating those patterns for you. I am looking at what you have already told me and evidencing the connections that appear to be there.

This is where one of the exercises I use naturally within my work becomes important: working backwards.

I have used this way of thinking for most of my life. I start with what is happening now and slowly work backwards. Sometimes we can go back many years. Sometimes we cannot. Some people are comfortable exploring their childhood or teenage years, while others do not want to go anywhere near those periods of their lives. If you only allow me to work with the previous two years, then those are the two years we work with. I cannot and will not force somebody into a part of their life they are not prepared to explore.

The important thing is that the situation you walked into the room talking about may not exist independently from everything that happened before it.

Then We Stop and Look at What We Have

This is also one of the reasons my deep sessions are long. We are not rushing through a list of questions to reach a predetermined conclusion.

Once I believe I have enough information, I will normally stop.

We may take a couple of minutes to breathe and relax. I may ask whether you want some water, whether you want the window open, whether you need to move around the room or whether you would prefer to step outside briefly and get some fresh air. Sometimes the client wants the break. Quite often they tell me, “No, let's continue.”

Then we continue.

I go back through my notes, but I do not read everything I have written. I select the points that I believe matter and start presenting the connections one at a time. I will explain why I have connected one point with another and continue working backwards where appropriate.

You can stop me.

You can disagree with me.

You can tell me that something means absolutely nothing to you.

That is also information.

I do not need you to agree with me simply because I am your coach. Sometimes something I notice will immediately make sense to you. Sometimes it will not. Sometimes we leave something alone and return to it later. The objective is not for me to manufacture a meaning for your life. The objective is for us to look carefully at what is already there.

Where Does Spirituality Come Into the Session?

This is where my work is somewhat different, and I think it is important for me to be transparent about that.

Spirituality is part of who I am and part of how I understand my work. Intuition and spiritual awareness can therefore be present within a session, but that does not mean every session becomes a clairvoyant or mediumship session.

If you have specifically come to me for spiritual communication, that conversation will naturally be different. If you have not, we establish boundaries around what you are comfortable exploring.

I do not believe that I can truthfully present myself as one person when I am coaching and suddenly become another person when spirituality enters the conversation. My spiritual understanding, my academic learning, my professional experience, my life experience and my ability to listen are all present in the same room.

However, you are still the client. You remain responsible for what you accept, what you question, what you want to explore further and what you decide is not for you.

Identifying a Pattern Is Not the End of the Work

Finding a connection does not automatically solve anything.

Once we have identified something that appears important, the question becomes: what are you going to do with that information now?

This is where the boundary between my responsibility and yours becomes much stronger.

I can ask questions. I can show you the patterns I have noticed. I can challenge something you have said. I can offer another perspective. I can help you work backwards. I can bring you back to something you said an hour earlier that now appears to have a completely different meaning. I can also help you create practical exercises to continue the work after you leave.

But I cannot live your life for you.

Towards the later part of the session, I start considering what practical work may be useful for you. I do not necessarily arrive with a standard worksheet that I give to everybody. Sometimes I create an exercise there and then, while you are sitting in the room with me, because by that point I understand much more about what you actually need.

I particularly like practical tools such as the Eisenhower Matrix, but the tool has to serve the person. The person should not have to fit themselves into the tool.

By this stage of a long session, people can also be tired. They have been talking, thinking, remembering, questioning and sometimes discussing things they have kept inside themselves for a very long time. That is another reason I pay attention to pace and boundaries. Intensity for the sake of intensity achieves very little.

So, Why Am I Your Clarity Coach?

Because I am not there to make your decisions for you.

I am there to listen carefully enough to understand what you are actually telling me. I am there to ask questions when questions need to be asked, to recognise connections, to evidence patterns, to work backwards when that is useful and to help you distinguish between what appears urgent and what actually requires your attention.

Sometimes spirituality will be part of that conversation. Sometimes practical life will dominate it. Quite often, the two exist together because human beings do not live their lives in perfectly separated boxes.

My responsibility is to help you see more clearly.

Your responsibility begins with what you decide to do with that clarity.

That, for me, is the difference.

I am not there to become the authority over your life. I am there to sit beside you for those hours, look carefully at what you have brought into the room, and help you understand it well enough that when you leave, you are in a better position to decide what happens next.