Coaching Services for Creatives (stuck or otherwise)

Is This You? I suspect it is.

-Always wanted to turn a long-standing idea into a book?
-Always wanted to get back into painting, music, or maybe acting?
-Always felt that you could be more creative but just didn’t know how to fit that part of you into your busy life?
-Always knew that you could be more creative but inner obstacles and past failed attempts to complete a project haunt you?

Does this sound familiar?

Working on creative projects of any sort and of any size is tough. So many things call our attention elsewhere, something stands between you and the creative success you know you can achieve. Here’s what stops most people:

Procrastination
Self-doubt
Difficulty getting organized
Getting sidetracked by inner critics, being overwhelmed, fear, and other inner troublemakers
Perfectionism
Blocks
Not knowing how to start or how to keep going

There are techniques and ways for changing all of these. At the same time, your strengthens can be called upon and broadened to help push your projects to completion. You can have a creative side, too.

A Coach Can Get You Going and Keep You Focused
Why do everything alone? Creative people can use all the support they can get to turn ideas into the completed projects you have always wanted. Do you think you can do all the heavy lifting alone? 99% of us can’t. With help, most of us can.

At last you can really get the creative life you want. A coach will work with you to shape your ambitions into a focused vision and then into the steps to get you there. Working together is powerful stuff. Before you know it, your project is a reality. You are published, your work is in a gallery, you are performing, etc. At last you are where you want to be.

No Luxury Fees but Serious Results
Not only is coaching necessary for most people to get their creative life unstuck and moving, it is practical, and certainly affordable. Most people only need two jump-start coaching sessions per month with e-mail follow-up. That’s it. After a few months, the major obstacles are out of the way or under your control. You learn from your coach how to self-coach.

To see in greater detail how all this works and the fees, go to our next page.

What the Heck is Coaching? Don’t take my word for it. Read this New York Times article to find out. Pros and cons are covered.

FREE first coaching session - I realize that personal coaching is new to most people. To reduce some of the unknowns about the process, I’m offering a free, 30 minute phone session to those seriously considering coaching. This is not a sales pitch session but a real, coaching session to begin the process of getting you to your goals. Simple. If you don’t like the process, fine, walk away. If you like it, try more and pay as you go. Interested? Contact me directly.

Take a Peek Inside My Head

If you want to see what I know and what I can bring to the table, see my tips, tools, and techniques blog at: www.TheStuckCreative.com

Here’s a recent comment on one of my blog posts:

“Man, did I need this!!! This is right where I am. I had to leave town for an emergency, and I haven’t gotten back to writing yet. I’ve been home for several days. I’ve completely lost track of the next step in my writing. ALL of this advice is awesome, and perfect for me RIGHT NOW, let alone the future. I am copying this and putting it a “Stuck Creative” folder I’m putting together ASAP. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!”

Is Your Creative Life Passing You By?
Yes, that can happen if you are not careful. Everything else and recovering from everything else can leave you blind and blocked to your Creative Life. Coaching can bring your Creative Life back to life through helping you find time, energy, support, and more to get you going and to keep your Creative Life growing. I use my The Creative’s Journey system to help guide us through your creative journey to a fuller Creative Life, getting you to where you want to go.

What is Coaching?
When you have a coach you have someone you can work with week-in-week out on your personal ambitions. A coach gives you a safe place to declare, explore, and implement those ambitions. A coach is a sounding board, objective observer, cheerleader, mild guide, doorway to other resources, another set of eyes, a source of structure and a source of freedom. You don’t have to remain stuck nor do you have to walk the challenging path of the Creative alone.

What Should I Expect?

What happens in coaching will vary by what you need and where you are. However, there are some foreseeable patterns for most people as they travel the path with a coach. Note: This is the typical progression of Creativity Coaching in my opinion, but you are not required to follow the order of topics below. Your coaching sessions will be customized to you and your interests.

Typical Early Stages of Coaching – “Help me get started. I know I can do this.”

Building The Tool Box

Early coaching sessions tend to focus on capturing, deepening, and expanding your vision of what you want to do. This work also includes focusing on why a vision is important, how to use that personal vision, when to turn to it for guidance and when to update it.

Further sessions after that generally include talk on: how to break your big vision or big project into manageable chunks, how to find time and energy to do this work, and how to overcome blocks to getting started.

Leaping Over Obstacles

Each of us have an array of obstacles—blocks, fears, inner critics, a desire to do too much, frustration with our speed of progress, problems from our creative past. We must learn to leap over these obstacles to move forward. Special techniques of self-observation, guided imagery, and inner dialogue are brought to this part of the creative journey.

Typical Middle Stages of Coaching – “Keep me going. I’ve waited a long time to do this so help me finish it.”

Keeping on the Path: Building Strengths

Persistence, warrior-like focus, dedication, courage, flow, and other strengths are discovered at this stage of the Creative/Creativity Coach experience. These strengths are stoked and anchored to make them available for creative practice, creative idea generation, and creative production. These strengths are so important at this stage because the middle portion of the creative path is filled with all sorts of distractions and dips that can pull apart and abolish the Creative’s forward movement. Just as the Creative is making deep and broad progress towards a long wanted achievement, these new challenges arise. Coaching gives the extra margin of support and training in the essential skills the Creative needs at this point.

Typical Later Stages of Coaching – “Thank goodness I got my first project done. Help me decide where I need to go next.”

Switching Gears to Mastering Self-Coaching

The goal of coaching is not only to help you achieve your ambitions but also to teach you how to coach yourself. As we progress with coaching, the secrets of coaching will be highlighted so you can take the techniques with you. If you wish, the process can be further illustrated with supplemental material from the world of coaching. Ultimately, you have to self-coach if you want to keep moving towards your goals.

Jump-Start Brief Coaching

People leave coaching. Yes, there is life after coaching. With that said, once you have experienced the power of a coaching relationship you know how important it is to occasionally return to coaching for a jump-start. Blocks come up, new opportunities arise, we forget how to help ourselves and more can happen. Come back for a single session or sign up for a longer brief coaching arrangement to get your mojo back.

How Long Does Coaching Take?

It depends on how much support you want and how much you really want to get a feel for coaching over the course of working on a project or projects. If you have had a lot experience with coaching or just want a quick surgical support period, then a month or two might do it. If you really want to get to know yourself as a Creative, to sharpen your approach to your creative work, stretch yourself to take on projects you have never faced before, and work broadly to share your creations with the world, think about working with a coach for 3, 6, or 12 months. If you want to work longer, that’s great, no one will be kicked out the door. You are in control of the coaching experience in terms of length of time and your goals.

Safe and Confidential
The coaching experience provides you a safe place to stretch your wings, freely express your ambitions, think big/be big, and explore thinking in new ways. It is also a great place to look directly at the old standards obstacles that crush achievement—fear of failure, anxiety, frustration, and the inner critic. Coaching is a confidential place. I follow the ethics of the world’s largest coaching association, the International Coach Federation which means our entire time together will be treated as confidential.

O.k., How Do I Get Started?

The vast majority of coaching in the world today is done over the phone, e-mail, or Skype. Most of my sessions are done by phone/Skype with e-mail follow-ups. The frequency of sessions can run from once a week to once a month, depending on where you are and what your needs are. For beginning coaching clients, I recommend weekly sessions to get you into the rhythm of coaching. Sessions are a productive 45 minutes with the client plugging away between sessions working on their projects and on optional homework assignments to help them build their Creative abilities.

Coaching Fees:

The vast majority of coaches require contracts and up-front payment of multiple sessions. I do not. Pay as you go. I charge $75 per session. Pay by credit card online or with me when we have our session. That’s it. Simple. Ready to get started?

Let’s meet by phone. We can discuss what you want to do, which program might work best for your needs, and learn about how we might be a fit. No pressure selling, just conversation about where you want your creative life to go. Contact me directly.

Group Coaching & Teaching

Feel free to contact me if you wish to start coaching for your group or for me to provide teaching at your organization on what keeps Creatives stuck and how to get help. This coaching can be done in person or via phone seminar. Contact me

For those living in the Washington, D.C. area, join The Stuck Creative Meetup group.