Notice Without Judgement: Part 2 of My Coaching Framework

When anyone new starts coaching with me, they want immediate results. Even if the problem they walk into my door was created over 10 years, they want me to fix it…now. Today. In a 90-minute session. That isn’t realistic. Instead, borrow my 4-part framework so you can be your own life coach.

You don’t want a flimsy relationship that can be shifted by a fly-by-night coach offering the latest quick-fix for your relationship. Why not? Because think how shallow the roots are on that fix. The next big wind (or your next big conflict) will blow over any shallowly-rooted-relationship.

Here’s an example:

My husband injured himself earlier this year. He fell off his bike and dislocated his ankle. The fix required lots of metal and screws and a night in the hospital. He was a great sport for the 8 weeks he was on crutches. But now the hard work of rebuilding all those muscles and ligaments is really showing itself, and it’s daunting.

As a result, he was not in a great headspace yesterday and I was being incredible dense and insensitive. 20 years ago, I guarantee we would have gotten in a big fight, with each of us finding fault with the other. We would dredge up old examples to justify why we were each RIGHT and the other person was WRONG.

But, our marriage has deep roots. For decades, we’ve been operating with a framework that sets us up to remain deeply connected.

Today, I’m going to share this framework with you. It’s the same framework that I use for all my private coaching.

 

Be your own life coach: My 4-part coaching framework

This week, I’m offering you the framework that I use in my private coaching. It includes 4 key elements:

• Celebrate
• “Good to notice”
• Tools and invitations
• The Take-away

Think of a way in which you’d like your relationship to change, and let’s go through my framework together so that, 20 years from now, or 20 days, or even 20 minutes from now, you have a better framework to connect you to your partner than, “Well, I’m RIGHT and you’re WRONG.”

After a client coaches with me, I send a detailed summary with notes about what we discussed, framed up in a way that my client can begin to think about their life, and their relationship, differently. And they can have a specific and practical tool to help them practice the shift we explored in our session.

Because when you can have a different perspective, and a simple, clear way to practice that renewed perspective, everything is able to change.

Step 2 of becoming your own life coach is “Good to notice”

I didn’t realize how often I say, “Good to notice” in coaching sessions until a coach friend of mine said, “As Rebecca Mullen would say, that’s ‘Good to notice.’” But it’s true. I believe that noticing yourself is the premise upon which change is built, so it is a core principle in my coaching framework.

We’re all different. We have different motivations, different histories, and different desires. Consequently, the key to the best coaching for you is different than it would be for your neighbor, your manager, or even your spouse.

The range of desires is vast! You put that together with the history and baggage of why you’re not able to grasp your desire? Well, we have some studying to do. And the person we’re studying is YOU.

I say “That’s good to notice,” because clients often want me to give them THE FORMULA for their right life. But there is no formula. We need to study YOU. We need to understand YOU. We need to notice you.

 

Everybody’s happily ever after looks different. That’s why you are the best person to coach yourself.

When we study YOU, we begin to get a picture of your unique needs.

• Some people crave a ton of non-sexual touch in order to feel connected
• While another person doesn’t feel loved if they’re not having sex several times each week
• Someone else wants a Saturday morning coffee and plan for the week’s meals to feel connected in relationship
• While still another wants to go paddleboarding and couldn’t care less about a meal plan

I feel like my job as your life coach is to help you identify the life of your unique dreams and contrast that with the life you’re living today. Then my job is to help you shrink the gap between the two with my huge bag of tools.

And the biggest tool I use is “That’s good to notice.”

 

What is important to notice? A key question is you want to be your own life coach

There are many things I invite people to notice.

• Fears and dreams
• Behaviors: especially the behavior you don’t realize you’re doing
• Voices in your head: which constantly dictate how you’re allowed to feel about yourself
• Blind spots and baggage

Let’s dive into these a little deeper.

 

Fears and dreams

Your fears and dreams hide. Isn’t that fascinating? Your fear might disguise itself as control or perfectionism. Did you know that perfectionism is a way that your fear might be disguising itself? Your dreams might hide in the person you were told you SHOULD become, rather than the authentic version of what truly brings you joy.

I have all sorts of tools for helping you unmask your fears, and seduce your dreams to come out of hiding.

 

Your behavior

We also notice how you behave. Many people tell me they want their partner to talk to them and tell them the deep feelings in their heart, then, when we notice my client’s behavior, we observe all the ways they sabotage the opportunities when their partner was on the cusp of those revelations.

This is so normal. Normalizing is another great thing that comes with noticing. Because often we develop blind spots. When I’m with you, noticing with compassion, it’s easier to expose these blind spots. There’s always, always, always a reason for your behavior, and when we can notice it with tenderness and loving-acceptance, the blockages often just melt away. The key is noticing with benevolence.

 

How you talk to yourself

Which brings me to noticing how you talk to yourself. It is a skill I’ll work on the rest of my life to talk kindly to myself without judgment nor agenda. I want to help you notice yourself with as much kindness and compassion as you would notice a dear, dear friend.

Compassionate noticing of yourself takes practice, but I am really good at helping you notice yourself gently. It’s amazing how insidious it is for that voice of judgment to creep in. It’s also stunning to see how much easier it is to change when you speak differently to yourself.

I once had a client who was a budding entrepreneur and she was so frustrated with the snail’s pace at which she was progressing.

But we discovered her self-talk was eviscerating! Here are some things she said to herself unconsciously, “You are so slow!” or “You take forever to learn new things!” or “How am I gonna build this business when I’m so stupid?”

With just one session we reworked this language by offering her busy self some compassion. She left with new self-talk, “You’re gonna move slowly on this project because every part of it is new. It’s OK. We can take all day to send this one email because it incorporates so much. You’re learning so many things in order to articulate this message, so take your time.”

She came into her next session and told me she landed 3 new clients from her dream list. This is the power of truly noticing your patterns and being able to make an organic and compassionate shift that respects your unique disposition.

 

Blind spots and baggage

Finally, we want to notice in order to identify your blind spots. We all have blind spots, and there’s typically a really good reason you haven’t been able to see something key about your disposition or your behavior.

Often, your blind spots are linked to your baggage: all the wounds and misunderstandings that have happened in your past. When you get hurt. your inner lizard—whose job it is to protect you from further pain—goes to work.

And, I’ve got to tell you, that inner lizard isn’t very enlightened. So sometimes that inner lizard just turns off the lights in certain mental rooms of your life. As a result, you miss the obvious. You feel blind, and that’s super frustrating.

But again, it’s about noticing all of that—the blind spots and the baggage that might cause your blindness—noticing all of it with tenderness and compassion.

I wish you could be in the room for the miracles that true lovingkindness unlocks. It’s always a…I don’t want to sound too corny here, but I want to tell you the truth…it’s a holy moment to witness. Because it’s love. Love you’re finally allowing yourself to feel and receive.

And love is transformational.

 

More things to notice

If you want to understand more about how foundational it is to healing that you’re able to notice yourself, here are a few more episodes about noticing.

Here’s an episode of my podcast about the power of noticing without good vs bad narratives.

Here is one about your negativity bias and how noticing it rather than letting it get out of control will help you.

Here is one about how noticing will allow you to see all the places you are blind. You’re understanding of the world grows out of your experience. You tend to over-generalize your experience, and under-value your partner’s experience. This leads to judgmental attitudes. I have it hard in life. My partner has it easy.

When you notice that voice—as opposed to BELIEVING that voice—you have a chance to see the world differently. When you feed your judgmental thoughts: you become more judgmental. When you feed your compassionate thoughts: you become more compassionate.

This episode talks about noticing what you need…rest in this case.

And, of course, notice whose business you’re in.

 

Do you want to coach with me?

I have open spots in my private coaching practice. That doesn’t happen very often, so I’d love to extend that invitation to you if you’ve been wanting to coach with me.

Reach out via my text number, 970-210-4480, or you can go to this page on my website. I can’t wait to get to know you.