By: Kim Green

Every week can’t be life changing or mind-blowing. This week was neither. But, it was still important. Tuesday, Lynn walked us through a new distinction: visioning. She taught us how we can use it with our clients to get them to move past their doubts and step into a new future. Lynn called it an “Awakening.” I like that. Although, I don’t remember her asking, but the thing that I took away from that class is how expansive the word IMAGINE really is.

IMAGINE is a word that holds our hopes and dreams. It causes me to be self-reflective, which is often a hard thing to do. Asking my clients to be self-reflective will be interesting. Most of us aren’t. We all get so stuck, don’t we?
And so, when I think about working with my clients to IMAGINE, to envision a life that they want, I become keenly aware that I haven’t had time to imagine lately, either. I’ve been too busy being a mom, a partner, an author and a student. I miss it.

Envisioning something different for my life is something that I used to do, regularly. I don’t know if it’s because I am a restless, attention deficient person, or because I enjoy the flow of energy, the surge in my brain, that happens when I start to use my imagination. Just taking myself out of my real life and putting me somewhere new actually fuels my reality. Try it sometime!

And so, just for this moment of writing, I take a few minutes to imagine a life that is no longer so congested with deadlines, timelines and obligations. I envision a life when I can return to my novel, where there is nothing else on my plate except to craft a novel that will mean something to the world. I envision leaving the soft cushy kudzu of Atlanta and moving somewhere else with my partner and my college bound son. I imagine us having a new start where life feels different, not so prudish, “sweet” and Southern. I think I miss the edges of my former New York life, which seemed so long ago. In my envisioning, I see a life in which my health is no longer a conversation, or a showstopper. Imagining all of that feels good to my soul. And, it motivates me because I can see it. It’s not impossible. It is within reach….

Thursday we talked about empowerment. No, you can’t empower another person. Empowerment, sort of a strange idea, comes from within. As coaches it is our job to coach our clients into a place of empowerment by pointing out their strengths, acknowledging the good things and being a stand for them, advocating for them. That will be fun. It is amazing how we all trudge through our lives, forgetting our own strengths. It will be fun to have the light go off with my clients when I list for them, their strengths that I see that they have forgotten.

Empowerment is what we all need. We all need to feel strong and able in our guts. What I took away from this lesson is something that Lynn said that struck a chord in me: We can never believe in weakness. There are only strengths and things that we are still developing.

Feeling empowered.

Kim Green is a writer and a student at The Institute for Life Coach Training. In this blog series, she has documented her experience as she goes through the Foundational training. To read about Kim's journey, click here.