The Passion Test with Steve Buxton

Our last event on Wednesday 20th July was on discovering your passions, and using certain tools to bring them into your life. Following a brief interview from the evening’s host Mary Daniels, Steve Buxton shared the Passion test process. The first part involved the participants listing the 10 things which made their life and work feel ideal... There was much more to this process, a pity you were not there to discover the whole process. The evening ended with Steve sharing The Seven Secrets for Living a Passionate Life.

Steve made a number of interesting comments during the evening, here are a few to give you a flavour of what you missed….
"As life inevitably presents you with choices and opportunities always choose in favour of your passions."
"As you answer The Passion Test questions you get clearer about your heart's desire. Passion is an on-going process."
"Whenever you are faced with a decision, a choice or an opportunity, choose in favour of your passions."

The feedback from the evening included comments such as:
“Thank you for such a simple and useful tool.”
“This evening has given me the confidence to follow my heart.”
“Simple and profound.”
Thank you, it was wonderful. I discovered it was ok to follow my heart.”
“I found my passion is strong as a bulldozer.”
“Thank you for your clarity, and for making it so effortless.”
“It was so useful to take the time to stop and ask myself these questions.”
“I know see that hurdles can be opportunities.”

Steve shared 7 principles to living a passionate life at the end of the evening:

1. Commitment - choose in favour your passions every day, and soon you'll discover that you are living a passionate life. Until you are committed, nothing will happen for you. Keep your passions where you can see them and learn to say no lovingly. When you're asked to do something that is not aligned with your passions, practice saying "I so appreciate you asking, and I'm not able to do that now". You can vary the words to make them appropriate. What is important is to first appreciate, love, understand and value the other person and then to state what you need. Use "and" which connects, rather than "but" which separates. Be committed, and be prepared to be flexible
2. Clarity - when you are clear what you want will show up in your life, and only to the extent you are clear. Gaining clarity is not a one-time experience; it's an ongoing process. You have the tools to create clarity now, so take the passion test at least every six months and review your markers at least once a year.
3. Attention - what you put your attention on grows stronger in your life. Pay attention every day to what you're putting your attention on. As you shift your focus to living your passions you will notice all of the good that is flowing into your life, and how your life is transformed.
4. Stay Open - stay open to your dreams showing up differently than you plan, and there is nothing that can stop you. When you are open to whatever is appearing now, even if it's different than the way you think it should be, you release your individual will and open to God's will for you. When disaster strikes and you are open, you are able to take advantage of the opportunities that inevitably present themselves.
5. Integrity - be as true to yourself as you are to others, and as true to others as you are to yourself. The biggest challenge most of us face is to meet our responsibilities to others while being true to ourselves by pursuing our passions at the same time. When you make commitments to others, make sure those commitments are aligned with your passions
6. Persistence - fulfilment belongs to those who stay the course. Many begin the journey, those who finish it are the ones who achieve success and fulfilment in life. When you are living a life truly aligned with your passions, persistence is not hard. Your deepest passions will drive you, in spite of yourself. When you experience setbacks, be gentle with yourself, nurture yourself, then pick yourself up and begin again when you are ready.
7. Follow Your Heart - when in doubt, follow your heart. Passion arises from the heart. The mind will only complicate matters. When all else fails listen to your heart. When you feel confused, or lost, or don't know which direction to head, then just start walking and pay attention to what your heart tells you

Spiritual Intelligence in Coaching

Sarah Alexander is a coach and a mentor, guiding people worldwide through her intuitive insights to align their personal and professional lives with their Spiritual Intelligence. She works with clients privately and in the business setting and is also a Director of the coaching and consulting company PKB Achieve, a company which brings success to business owners based on a spiritual ethos and message. Her book is Spiritual Intelligence in Business: The Eight Pillars of 21st Century Business Success.

This was an amazing evening with Sarah Alexander. The room was packed and it was certainly a high vibe evening! She explained how our Spiritual Intelligence is an energy force within us. And how this energy force is constantly guiding us forward, evolving us as people and leading us to the art of effortless accomplishment in all that we do. She explored how we can tap into this energy and how to open to our intuition and inner guidance for ourselves and our coaching clients.

Sarah began the evening by contrasting and highlighting really clearly the distinctions between the traditional principles and elements of Coaching with the Spiritual Intelligence principles that contribute to coaching highlighting how and in what ways Spiritual Intelligence can make a real difference to people we work with.

This evening Sarah talked about:
How to bridge spiritual ideas and practices with coaching clients;
How to set up a powerful coaching space through intention;
How to affirm for solutions to be found;
The difference between self-improvement and self-acceptance;
The importance of focusing on the client's perfection.

Sarah highlighted the differences with how traditional coaching often draws from the masculine elements of enabling whilst Spiritual Intelligence draws from the more feminine elements of enabling and supporting deep growth and progress. Ultimately real authentic power lies not in self-improvement but on being present, embodying self-acceptance and self-compassion.

One of the practices for the evening involved working in pairs. We were invited to close our eyes and tune into your partner’s energy and intuitively sharing any messages you felt you were receiving up about the individual. We were reminded of giving any feedback in a loving and compassionate way. In the group feedback after the session it was great to hear the accuracy of many of the messages, senses and hunches that was picked up through this quiet tuning in practice.

Amongst many other values points raised during the evening Sarah shared pockets of her own spiritual practice. Particularly of interest to the group was Sarah’s spiritual connection to a higher power or source and how she requests healing for her clients. Sarah shared how she tunes into each client individually before each session a reminder of how in our busy lives how important it is to take time in preparing ourselves before and after one to one work. This point resonated with many present and raised the question of how spiritual are we allowed to be in the corporate world?

From many of the comments made it became clear that for many whilst our spiritual practices may not be explicit when proposing or contracting in the corporate world it plays a significant role on who we are being in our one to one coaching and or other interventions with clients.

Finally Sarah's closing reminded us all that at the centre and core of each human being we are all perfect and that the role of the coach is to realign the individual with that truth.

We will definately be uinviting Sarah to run a workshop on Spiritual Intelligence in Business later on in the year.
Steve Nobel

Quantum Level Coaching - With Sue Coyne and Penny Mallinson.

We had a great evening with Sue Coyne and Penny Mallinson who presented on Quantum Level Coaching.

In this experiential session attendees explored Quantum Intelligence (QI) to access their knowing, passion and vision. It was a full, rich and very experiential evening. People who came along learnt:

How to create a coaching space for optimum flow;
What it means to coach transformatively;
How to be fully present with a client;
How to use intuition in your coaching practice;
How to listen transformatively;
How to help your client access and awaken their full potential.

The feedback was amazing, comments at the end of the evening included:
"amazing feeling."
"I am now full of light."
"very inspiring."
"I am blissed out!"
"one of the best coaching evenings I have attended in a long while."
Tonight before arriving here I requested from the universe to find peace and coming here tonight not only have I found peace and inner calm but I now have two really great role models - Thank you."
This was my first time to the Coaching Circle and I feel so at home with this group it almost feels like a second home. This was obviously the first best pick - Follow this I say to the next series of presenters!"
"I loved the deepness and clarity and authenticity of your work. You could tell that you both embody what you teach. You both had a grounding presence and passion. Thank you both for your care, sensitivity, wisdom and generosity."

Sue is a practising executive coach and a graduate of the Advanced Diploma course at the AoEC. She combines Connective Coaching techniques with Gestalt and Somatic Cognitive Coaching to suit the needs of her clients.

Penny has been involved in body and energy work for 10 years and is an experienced facilitator in this field. Following a successful business career she is now a Director of various NFP’s involved in the area of self development and education and is a mentor to several executives.

For more information on their work please visit www.connectiveness.co.uk

Graphic Coaching with Sonya Welch-Moring

Our last Coaching Circle was on Graphic Coaching with presenter Sonya Welch-Moring

Graphic Coaching uses visual templates to help you get you focused on where you are now, where you want to be in your career, your business or your life generally. Never having experienced Graphic Coaching I was intrigued to hear what our presenter Sonya Welch-Moring had to say. Sonya is a Career and Professional Development coach who has over 20 years of people development experience as a facilitator, mediator and coach.

Sonya was both passionate and engaging and took the group through the graphic coaching system. This system enables a coaching client to put pictures to coaching conversations. It has many applications both for an individual and for team visioning and development.

The feedback from the evening was amazing. “It was an eye opener. I valued Sonya’s honesty and sharing.” “Very engaging evening, it was very good to go through the coaching journey with the templates.” “Time went quickly. Time goes quickly when you’re having fun.” “I think this evening we have only just scratched the surface.” “Thank you for sharing so many great resources.”

To find out more about Sonya's work visit www.coachingcultures.com