Jaclyn Beckerman Coaching

I saw this weekend that I have a lot of charge/energy around the concept of being a “shitty coach” and “not being as good as others”.  If something triggers me to feel like either of those, I immediately shut down and start beating myself up for it. It goes back to a very young conversation that I’m just not good enough and don’t fit in.

I realized it’s not that any of that is at all true, or that anyone else believes that it’s true, but rather that I spend so much time trying to be NOT that, that I can’t actually get outside of it.  There’s some part of me deep down that must believe it could be true because there’s significant fear of being just that.

What I saw, with the help of a couple friends/colleagues, is that if I create it as a neutral place, I can then build, grow and learn from there.  For example, “Ok, so I’m a shitty coach.  Now what?” or “Ok, others are better than me. Now what?”.  At first I couldn’t even be with that concept.  But the reason I couldn’t be with it is because I think I shouldn’t be a shitty coach or inferior, and I am masterful at beating myself up about things I think ‘shouldn’t be’.

However, I realized that if I stopped beating myself up all the time, I would have infinite more space to be with people and to make a difference with my clients.  To really open my heart to others and allow it all.

What do you see for yourselves?

What are some hot buttons that trigger you to get angry or upset with yourself, that you just have a really hard time being with?

Often it’s the things that are the most charged for us that cause us to do everything in our power to not be that thing we fear.  Yet then we’re imprisoned by the belief that at our core we are in fact that thing.

It’s often easier to see in other people.  You almost inevitably know lots of people who beat themselves up for everything and anything possible.  They believe they’re not a good enough leader, they’re not attractive enough, cool enough, smart enough, strong enough, funny enough, etc.  So they do everything they can to compensate for what they imagined is wrong with them rather than be with that fear and create an opportunity to grow.

Well, you too.

What consequences do you see of living your life based on some kind of imaginary fear?

From there, what new way of being would you like to create instead?  Because that is what’s possible from taking ownership of your interpretations and actions.  That is where you can make a difference.

I’m feeling the need to share that I don’t like talking about my business in my posts.  There’s something about looking good and avoiding looking bad that consistently keeps me from writing about wins (or breakdowns) or lessons I learn in my business.

I’ve taken my willingness to be vulnerable with people to a whole different level just by starting this blog yet it’s clear to me that I’m not sharing things that would definitely be of value to folks in order to save face or avoid being judged.  It’s funny because I imagine it’s easy for people to judge lots of the things I talk about in my posts anyway yet for some reason when it comes to my business, I get far more confronted than by other topics.

I think we all do this.  We don’t share authentically with everyone what’s really going on in certain areas of our lives because we judge that they should be going or certain way or shouldn’t be going however they are.

Something fabulous that one of my clients said today was that in looking at how things were in the past (actually just a few months ago), she saw that they had to go the way they did and she had to go through what she did in order to get where she is now.  And because of that, she could see that the process was perfect.  Because today she feels empowered and liberated from some limiting beliefs that had a stronghold on her for most of her life.  But couldn’t have gotten here without going through the muck.  By the same logic, you can’t get where you want to go without going through whatever is in the way and breaking it down.  So naturally then, where you are too is perfect.  And there’s simply still work to be done to get the results you want.

So the thing I want to share about my business today is that I’ve had a breakthrough in it recently.  I shared in my post, Give It All Away, that I finally understood that I wasn’t getting what I wanted in life because I wasn’t giving it to the universe.  I said I wanted to be a contribution and to have a thriving coaching practice but I certainly wasn’t consistently having new clients sign up.  What I see is that I was actually being really stingy with both myself and others – more interested in what I could gain for myself than what I could give away to others and life.

What I didn’t share about my experience that day at Sacred Center was that this understanding that I needed to give to the universe what I was looking to have myself really moved to give more than my usual $2 or $3 donation when they passed the baskets around.  Instead, I filled out a credit card slip and donated $20.  This may or may not seem like a huge deal to you but for me it was an act of giving away the thing I’d been struggling to bring in to myself to something I love – without the story of ‘I can’t afford to do this’ or ‘I need to save money’ or ‘This is irresponsible’ attached to it.  I was contributing to something I saw as wonderful in the world instead of looking to be contributed to.  And it felt great.  Her message (I recommend reading the post if you haven’t already) had really shifted my perception of who I was being in the world.

The magic, the reason this is so significant to share, is that the very next day, I had a new client hire me.  While I know I’m a great coach and provide a lot of value for people, actually bringing in new business had definitely not been my strong suit in the past.  So just believe me when I say that this blatant manifestation of the law of attraction was pretty phenomenal.

I have been living and being from this place ever since.  Very aware of my intentions and solely out to contribute to people whether they are friends, prospects, clients, colleagues or family.

This past Sunday at Sacred Center, when they passed the donation baskets around, I at first gave $3, then I decided that was too stingy and was compelled to give more and added another $5.  I also did a workshop which I knew I wanted to participate in and was another $10.  I only had one sample session set up for this week, my first since that last one.  Now THIS prospect, who is wonderful and my ideal client, hired me as well.

More and more I’m feeling confident and certain that my practice is going to thrive and I will be able to serve myself by serving others!  My dream is to support as many people as possible in transforming their lives to be the life of their dreams! (In the future that will also include books and inspirational speaking!) And I must say, living (and loving) from this place and creating this life is SO exciting and rewarding!

What do you see would be possible for YOU if you started living from a space of contributing rather than ‘getting your needs met’ or ‘what’s in it for you’?  (And lets be honest, ‘what’s in it for you’ tends to dominate most folks way of being whether they intend it to or not.)

Awhile back, my sister posted this amazing picture on Facebook of the two of us as children.  I exclaimed to one of my cousin’s how I wish I had pictures like that yet didn’t have a single one. Being the youngest of three (6 years younger than my sister and 10 younger than my brother), my parents had fizzled in their obsessive picture taking (and more importantly saving) habit by the time I was born. (Something I’ve vocally chastised them for in subsequent years).  My cousin said she was sure she had some and would dig them up.  I never pursued this though. Months later I received a birthday card from that same cousin with a surprise in it.  It was a piece of paper folded up that turned out to be a collage of pictures from when we were all little! Such an amazing and thoughtful gift.

Recently, my other cousin (the first one’s sister) was over my apartment for the first time and saw the collage.  She pointed to one of the pictures within it where I was maybe about 5 or 6 or so (?) with a huge smile on my face and my arms thrown around my first cousin’s neck.  She exclaimed, “THAT’s exactly how I remember you!”

The significance for me in this was realizing just how far I’d strayed from that little girl who wanted nothing more than to love and be loved.  I was gifted at over-the-top, whole-hearted, give everything love. I think many people just couldn’t be with this much love and couldn’t handle it. Consequently, I was frequently devastated and heart-broken by it not being consistently received or reciprocated.  They would tell me things like I was too much and needed to calm down or ‘OK, that’s enough!’.  What I made that mean was that there was too much life in me and I needed to make myself smaller to make others comfortable.

As a repercussion for the pain and disappointment I felt emotionally, I made a decision at some point when I was young to instead withhold my love. Replacing it with judgment and cynicism veiled by a mask of friendliness and optimism. I withheld my love in order to avoid disappointment and heartbreak, essentially to protect myself from that terrible feeling. Inevitably this made it very difficult for me to accept it as well. I proceeded to do this for most of my life. In fact it’s really only over the past six months that I’ve had a significant breakthrough in being, sharing, and allowing love.

About six months ago one of the head leaders of the coach training program I help lead, Accomplishment Coaching, reflected to me that her experience of ‘Jaclyn on automatic’ was of no intimacy.  This made a huge impression on me.  Six months later, that same leader’s acknowledgment to me was to thank me for being ‘almost embarrassingly intimate’ and a ‘fierce stand for love’.  When I mentioned the reflection she’d given me six months earlier, she said she’d honestly completely forgotten it because that person no longer existed and it was so far from her current experience of me.

THIS is why I do this work.

Ultimately, I now genuinely understand that as a child my capacity for love was just enormous. This is and was my GIFT. It wasn’t those people’s fault that I didn’t feel it was received or returned from them and they weren’t hurting me on purpose.  They didn’t do anything wrong and they loved me to THEIR best or full capacity, whatever that was at the time. But of course I was only a child (and human) and didn’t understand this.  In fact I don’t believe many adults truly understand this.

It’s only because of this journey, becoming a life coach and being committed to this work and sharing it with the world through Accomplishment Coaching and Landmark and this blog and actually taking what I learn into my life and integrating it through action that I’m able to open my heart again and truly experience loving the people in my life fully.

And God, am I so incredibly grateful.

My sister (God bless her) nudged me that I hadn’t yet written a post today and needed to get on it. (Said in much kinder, gentler terms, but absolutely needed and appreciated).

If I haven’t mentioned this already, I graduated from, and now lead, one of the best coach training programs in the country.  My apologies if I have and I’m boring you to death with my emphatic endorsement of this company (Accomplishment Coaching).  It meets once a month, Saturday and Sunday, 10am-6pm for the participants, 8am-8pm for us, the leaders.  As such, these weekends are inevitably incredibly intense and rigorous, calling forth your highest and greatest self and blatantly reflecting your survival strategies for getting by.  This is one of those weekends.

I found out today that what I was relating to as my breakthrough in leadership was really just a breakthrough in managing whatever is thrown my way.  You may have already deduced that. You may have not. I for one was thrilled enough with my job managing things that this was most definitely not what I wanted or expected to hear.

Again, leadership takes a lot of willingness to ‘work on it’.

I have NO idea what leadership looks like from a place other than ‘the rules’, ‘managing’, or ‘how’, or even what the hell to do with this idea.  But I do know that it’s the next step for me to have a breakthrough in (and develop) my leadership.

What was reflected to me is that I manage things and follow the rules/instructions (really well) rather than make up my own rules and creatively (and spontaneously) create.  Which, of course, is then what I was invited to practice. So this is what I’m now taking on.

On a somewhat separate (or not) note, I had a breakthrough in my relationship to connecting with others(!).  I realized that I’ve held on (against?) people that in order to prove their friendship to and connect with me, they should succumb to or accept my invitation to be a part of my life via getting together when I propose plans or supporting me in some way or another.  The breakthrough was in realizing exactly how much others are going through in their own lives.  That they don’t (always, or maybe even usually?) have it all together and are juggling a lot of balls in the air.  When I really got present to this, all that I could see or recognize was my complete and utter compassion and love for them.  I suddenly understood that being wrapped up in my own experience, I’d made it all about me.  I wanted THEM to do something WITH or FOR me to prove they loved me.  The ‘kerplunk’ moment was realizing, ‘Oh my God, what can I do FOR THEM?!?!?‘  And actually asking them for what they needed and how I could support them in their lives.

See, what I realized was, that in the bigger sense, all I wanted was connection.  And that I was making connection all about me.  When I was able to get ‘responsible’, or ‘at cause’, for creating connection by connecting TO THEM, instead of waiting for them to connect to me, my mind was blown. I realized I can get the same outcome I’ve been searching for through my own actions, rather than waiting for someone else to ‘get it right’ or ‘figure it out’.  And it’s infinitely more powerful, more connected and more loving.

Talk about a life altering realization… I’m sure my friends will be thrilled.

True.

But it’s also incredibly rewarding.

When you’re part of a team, everyone still has their own stuff going on and lets be honest, most people avoid responsibility like the plague.

Therefore, taking on a leadership position of any sort requires you to really step up and enroll your team in creating something amazing together (whether it’s something that seems large or small).  That’s the magic fairy dust.  What I’ve learned is that a truly great leader does not do everything by themselves!  They create structure, support and enrollment from their team (or the people in their lives) in order to achieve the best results they possibly can.

This opportunity is frequently thrust upon me as a mentor coach in the Accomplishment Coaching coach training program.

When I first took on this position I would consistently hold back from making requests for support. I was incredibly confronted by the idea of relying on others to support me, assuming that I either wouldn’t receive it or that it was my responsibility alone to complete whatever task I took on.

Over six months later, although I’m still constantly learning, I’m actually finding myself making requests easily and being a leader within my team.  Trying out new ways to communicate effectively and achieve common goals by taking action and creating results together.  Trust me, this isn’t always easy.  My automatic response is generally to ask everyone to pitch in a few times, after minimal response give up and just take things on all by myself, handle them, and then be resentful of the fact that no one helped me.  (Talk about being victimized by my team and my assignment).

NOW, I’m finding myself instead choosing to create breakthroughs for myself in leadership and in partnership.  Getting more intentional and creative with structures sufficient to everyone’s resistance.

For example, after various (and mostly fruitless) attempts at getting folks to do some reconnaissance phone calls to identify something we’re looking for for a future weekend, I was close to giving up and doing it all myself (can you hear the small violin playing in the background?). I’d also like to be clear here that I’m not blaming them.  I can take responsibility for that I wasn’t being an effective leader – they didn’t do anything outside of what would be expected of any human beings asked to take on yet another task among the many they already have.

Just short of taking it on myself I stopped myself, realizing that this was not the point of me taking on this task.  The point was to produce the result AND enroll and inspire my team to work together.  After all, I took on this position in order to develop my leadership, not to simply manage whatever was thrown my way.  So, I came up with the idea to have a power hour (pretty much what it sounds like) to make all the phone calls we needed to to spec out some information for a future weekend.  I got everyone aligned with either the same hour or a time they could do it on their own (and be held accountable to me), and poof!, like magic, all the calls were made within the same week and the task is on track to being complete!

I seriously couldn’t be prouder of myself for sticking it out and producing the result with them instead of once again doing it all by myself.  I got to experience myself as an effective leader AND team member at the same time.  Pretty cool stuff…

What are some of your experiences with taking on leadership positions or tasks?  What’s your automatic thing to do when put in this position?  Also what are some things you’ve done or ideas you have for creating enrollment and partnership when working with others??

I’d love to learn from your wins and I’m sure others would too!

A friend suggested I write a post about why I decided to be a coach and I realize people frequently ask me just that so here it is.

I was never really the little girl who knew what she wanted to be when she grew up. I was actually somewhat envious of the other children that did seem to know with such conviction. But nope, not me. I will say that when I was around 3 years old I would constantly draw pretty pictures and then go peddle them to my parents and their friends for quarters and dollars. Although there were many other instances in between I’ll fast forward to one more example just prior to college when I sold around $5,600 worth of Cutco knives in just 2 1/2 weeks, so lets just say everyone always assumed I’d go into sales of some sort, like Dad. So, I knew I would go to college and thought perhaps I’d do something to do with sales but that’s about as far as my aspirations went.

College came and I decided to go to Rutgers – my brother’s alma matter – I guess I looked up to him enough to think this was really the place for me. I thought about doing the business school but after barely getting by in pre-calc I made a sharp left turn out of that trail of despair. I decided to major in Communication and minor in Psychology because I found them fascinating and I was always drawn towards learning about people. I leaned towards public relations for awhile – doing my internship at one of the best boutique PR firms in the country. I can’t say I loved it but it was fast paced and interesting and since it was the path I’d been heading down I figured I’d look for a job doing just that.

After a few interviews with PR firms my little sister in my sorority passed my resume along to her brother’s girlfriend – she worked at a large media buying agency. I got and went on the interview and decided I loved it there – it sounded like interesting work with a ton of great, fun people – they loved me too and I got the job.

Oh the youthful expectations of your first job. Lets just say it wasn’t what I expected. The work was tediously boring and many of the people were, well, lets just say we weren’t friends. I constantly felt like the odd person out and that I didn’t belong there. So after a year and a half I left.

I decided perhaps an advertising agency where they actually create the ads would be a better fit for me. If you haven’t noticed a theme here yet I was hop scotching through all sorts of marketing jobs because it was always assumed I’d go into the business world – and marketing was the only area of business that seemed relatively interesting to me. I ended up at a pharmaceutical ad agency doing account management. This time referred by an alumni of my sorority (from a different school) to her sister-in-law who headed up the agency. This was fun for the first 6 months or so while we were busy and I actually had new and interesting things to learn and do but inevitably it proceeded to turn, yet again, to even more boring and tedious than the last job. This one only lasted about a year. Hey, my Dad always said, choose something you love to do because you’re going to be doing it for a long time, so I wasn’t willing to settle.

BUT, it was while at this ad agency that I met Josh, Josh was a freelance art director and had been working there for a couple months before I happened to walk in on him having a conversation about coaching.

Now lets backtrack real quick. For at least a couple years I’d fantasized about doing something else entirely. Working with people, helping them live happier lives, helping them see the brighter side of life where opportunity and learning abounds. I’ve always been the optimistic one, the one friends would come to for advice or to get them out of their funk and I’ve always loved inspiring them to see their life as bigger than they currently could see. I’d had countless people suggest to me that I become a therapist OR a life coach. (“A life coach? What’s that?”) I looked into becoming a therapist – too much school, too much dealing with people’s problems and trauma’s. Not my cup of tea. Life coaching, on the other hand, sounded pretty perfect and I was definitely interested but per the usual, a la procrastinator extraordinaire, I put it in my back pocket and didn’t put any serious thought into pursuing it for some time.

SO, when I met Josh, and overheard him explaining what coaching was to someone, I stopped in my tracks and very excitedly the words just spilled from my mouth; “I’m actually seriously interested in that! I’ve thought about becoming a coach!”. His enthusiasm matched my own. As fate would allow, the coach training program he was participating in, Accomplishment Coaching, happened to be meeting that weekend and they happened to be the only program (at least that I know of) that allows people to come observe their training (that’s in about 250 programs worldwide) and offers a workshop in the afternoon.

I was free that weekend. I was NEVER free on Saturdays. But I was this time. Obviously I was meant to be there.

Within the first hour of the observation I fell in love. I just knew. This is where I’m meant to be. This is what I’m meant to do. I did the workshop and was even more blown away, even more sure that this was for me. I left that evening to go out with some friends and enthusiastically proclaimed, “I’m going to be a life coach!” Around 2 weeks later I sent in my deposit and was registered for the program.

When that program started, 4 months after I sent in my registration form, my life changed forever. I’d just quit my job at the ad agency to pursue coaching full time. And that’s where my journey of living a life transformed began…

Best thing I’ve ever done for myself. Hands down. Ever.