Be Your Own Coach - The one where I finally wrote a blog....

I promised myself that 2025 would be the year I start writing.
It’s currently 4.34pm on December 1st

Better late than never!

Ok, in all seriousness, I’ve always loved writing, be that linkedin posts, journal entries, even work emails (though my inbox doth protest), and more recently I’ve found so much joy in writing my weekly coaching newsletter for Be Your Own Coach.

The feedback from the newsletter has been heart warming, and I’ll be honest, my ego bloody lapped that up, so here we are….

Welcome to more of my mind-museings about us mere mortals. Our behaviours, relationships and real life experiences, served with a helping of coaching advice and techniques, wrapped up in anecdotes (and antidotes), to help us all find some form of pathway through this jungle we call life.

So why the hell has it taken me the best part of a year (and the past 5 years chewing Liams’ ear off about it) to put pen to paper, or more accurately, acrylic nail to keyboard?

Well the answer to that is where we start our journey together.

My name is Kathy and I am a recovering end-gamer.

I don’t mean I am a dab hand at Mario Cart, I mean I really struggle to allocate my time and attention to things which do not have a ‘business value add’ or tangible outcome.

…and I can see where I have learnt this behaviour!

As we know in the coaching world, if someone continually repeats an action (like end-gaming), it is usually because it has served them well at some point in life. If the behaviour has resulted in some form of safety or positive result, then our brains naturally decide it is a good thing which we should do. All the time. Forever.

For me, without going all This Is Your Life on you(remember that show?), I trained as a musical theatre performer, a highly competitive industry. Every second outside of drama school was an opportunity to do more. More classes, more workshops, more events, more networking, more research… to stand me in the best position for when we were released into the wild West End in search of agents and ultimately work (aka success.)

And guess what…it worked!

All the extra classes, all the late night hand written agent invites, all the new skills built and connections made meant that come graduation I had an agent lined up, auditions waiting, and small jobs to ensure rent could be paid and I could confidently call myself a working-performer.

The constant end gaming not only served me well, it laid the foundations for what was going to be an incredible decade-long career.

And like most things, this ‘trait’ didn’t restrict itself to just my professional life… end gaming because my personality:

Invited to go for a walk with friends? Perfect, this means I’ll also be able to tick off my step target.
Fancy reading a book? Yup…as long as it comes from the non-fiction business or personal development category!
How about returning to dance class? Sounds great, I can tick my exercises box and also keep my skills sharp for when I retire and teach dance as a hobby…(talk about forward planning!)

Jesus wept, it’s actually exhausting.

Which brings us back to the 5year blog-delay.

Previously, every time I sat down to write, my over excitable business-brain became flooded with thoughts:

How will it benefit my career?
What is the tangible outcome?
How many subscribers or readers am I going to aim to get?

And the icing on the cake: How can I turn this into a profitable business …?

*cue laptop slammed shut! ARGHHHH!*

So what changed?

What happened for me to now be able to sit at the kitchen table and merrily type away metric and measurement-free?

I got comfortable being VERY uncomfortable!

I wish I could sit here and give you a 3 step-process to achieve overnight liberation, but in all honesty, it has taken me months, if not years of creeping into the discomfort, and learning that the world doesn’t implode when you actually chill out.
Over these past months especially, I’ve had to really lean into the element of trust.

My brain knows that action = safety, therefore I needed to learn to trust myself whilst exploring a new pathway.

This started with looking at what I was trying to avoid by keeping busy.

Every action comes from a reaction, and for me, a lot of my ‘busy-ness’ and productivity was my way of reacting to the fear of failure and an attempt to feel safe and secure. Years ago, failure was not being good enough for the role, not getting the part, not getting an audition; but now the landscape has changed.

The landscape changed and I needed to update my beliefs and this started with redefining what ‘failure’ meant for me at this point in my life:

Kathy 2025: Failure is:

- Not enjoying life to the fullest
- Not pouring into the relationships which bring me joy
- Not saying YES to things I love
- Holding myself back through fear
- Having regrets which didn’t need to be

And with this new set of beliefs, came the rule book to follow.

Now that doesn’t mean I sacked everything off and just started doing whatever the hell I wanted, but it did mean that every time I felt myself slipping into my default behaviours, I had to take a moment and question whether this was in alignment with my new rules and beliefs.

Sometimes it worked and something the old-me grabbed the reigns, however over time, the grip became loosened and I found myself growing into the version of me I wanted to become.

I knew if I didn’t start writing, I would look back with regret…and that was a disservice to the new version of me.

So here we go…

Welcome to The Be Your Own Coach Blog - an anecdotal attempt to make some sense of modern life so you don’t have to.

I am so glad you are here!

Kathy x