Nestled into a corner at The Coffee Club in Dalby, Queensland, on Wednesday morning, laptop open and the tap-tapping of productivity fueled by a flat white, I was surprised but comforted to see Carolyn Cutforth install herself in the cubicle next to me. After ordering up a bowl of muesli with yoghurt and berries, she unzipped her backpack and asked me to plug her laptop power cord in: a fellow worker bee! Before I could muster an inquiry, she beat me to it: "And what do you do?". I chuckled, said I was about to ask her the same thing, and so began our 'Meet & Greet'.
At 53, Carolyn has a wealth of life experience behind her, which she puts to good use as a life coach and coach mentor. Her energy is contagious, her outlook positive and the life-coach tips are plentiful and helpful (I'll share some below), but it's her personal story that leaves a lasting impression and a lot for me to chew over.
"I didn’t want to go but I got dragged along," she says. "I was so impressed and so excited by what I heard that when they invited people to become coach trainers, I jumped at it and I became a coach trainee. I graduated as a qualified coach after one year and then applied to be a Master Coach and was accepted. I’ve been a Master Coach with Beyond Success for nearly two years."
As a 'Master Coach', it's Carolyn's role to guide 20 or so coaches-in-training through the 12-month Beyond Success course, during which time they attend four bootcamps in Canberra and complete online units in life management, self-esteem, relationships, communication, assertiveness, finance and business.
"Everybody starts off with life management, which is all about your values, your time management, your mission statement and your goals, and then they go on to the other units that are most applicable to them," she says. "A great coach is someone who asks questions that help that person to explore and hold that person accountable for taking actions. It’s not about telling people what to do."
Carolyn finds the coaching, in addition to the workshops she hosts and the executive coaching she does through her personal business, Living Success, allows her the flexibility to have the lifestyle that's most conducive to her health and wellbeing. She doesn't work on weekends, tries not to work into the evenings and is free to take trips to Dalby with her new gentleman friend on his motorbike.
Her second marriage, she says, ended by way of mutual agreement: "We were together 29 years, we even renewed our wedding vows two years ago, but the next season of his journey is going to be pretty full-on in his business, and I didn’t want such a busy life, so we let each other go to be the best that we can be. We talk to each other almost every day. There’s still a friendship there. Definitely. He has a lovely new lady in his life – actually, they’re expecting a family in July or August. Very exciting for him."
When I tell her I believe my values are Christianity, my husband, work that's fulfilling, people and health and wellbeing, she dissects them with a knife. Apparently, most of those are not values but the outworking of values, which are more along the lines of loyalty, commitment, authenticity and creativity. The problem for most of the people she coaches, she says, is their values don't stack up to the lives they're living.
"People might say that loyalty to their family is a value, but then they go and have an affair," she says. "That tells me that maybe that's not a value for them right now – maybe it's excitement. So there's a friction there. It's important to know the difference between your intentional values and those you're living, which are what you spend your time on, your money on and what you fill your environment with."
As an executive coach, it's Carolyn's role to stop CEOs and leaders from derailing themselves. "Quite often you have people come into management because they have strengths in their personality but there comes a time when often those strengths become their weaknesses. And so I come in to help that derailment and bring them back by recognising the weaknesses and turning them back into strengths."
When I press Carolyn for tips for young women looking to improve their work/life balance, to preserve themselves on their way up the career ladder, she suggests we do a values check.
"The first thing I would ask is, what is it about climbing the ladder? Does it make you feel better about yourself? What is it about watching other people climb the ladder that makes one go, ‘Maybe I need to do that’? I think exploring the reason why you want to do it is the first thing. Was a message given to you that you’re no good – you’re not good enough – unless you have ticks in these boxes? Sometimes we think success means ‘When I get there, when I’ve done that, I’m surely going to feel better about myself and feel as if I fit in this world’. But what often happens is people get there and find it’s not enough, so they have to go to the next stage and the next stage and then they burn out or marriages fall down or you take to drink or something because there’s a lot of pain inside. So, for young people, it’s better to know who you are, what your purpose is and especially what your values are."
As most journalists know, it's often when the dictaphone has been turned off and the questions answered that some of the most interesting material between yourself and your interview subject occur: more at ease with each other, the anecdotes flow freely, the advice is forthcoming, the experiences shared.
After forgetting her makeup bag on a recent trip, and wearing none for three days, Carolyn stepped into a pharmacy and reached for the Natio skin product. When she took them to the counter to pay for them, she was told that she would be getting not only a special gift of free sample products, but a bonus set of makeup bags, too. This, she says, is the sort of thing that happens when you choose to embrace life and look at it from a position of abundance, rather than in deficit. When a friend of hers was diagnosed with cancer, she similarly took it upon herself to show her friend that there was still beauty in the world.
"One of the things I realised is that one of my values is beauty," she says. "I live in a beautiful little cottage and everywhere you look there’s beauty. I love beautiful clothes, I love a beautiful garden, I like to look beautiful when I go out. When I had a friend who had cancer, without even realising it, it was my role to take her to show her life was still beautiful, so I’d take her to beautiful craft shops and coffee shops."
When Carolyn shares that she, too, is a Christian, but has become disillusioned – not with God but the church – and so, too, her daughter, my heart aches a little. And the nagging pre-conceived judgements I have about the role of life coaching are laid aside. Maybe there's something we can learn about the need for other's help to get us to where we want to be – with God, in life, in relationships and our work?
"Let's face it, life is about relationships," she says. "It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking couples, friends or executives who are managing teams, it’s all about relationships."
Visit Carolyn's website (undergoing a redesign) here or Beyond Success here.Born and raised in England, Carolyn trained as a teacher (B Ed) before moving to Tasmania with her young husband under the assumption that life would be "sunny with bronzed bodies". Not so. But she raised three girls there with him – their eldest is now 29 – before they divorced. She met her second husband, Peter, and they moved to Queensland in her 40th year. Then she fell ill with Fibromyalgia, a debilitating chronic condition triggered by a bout of Ross River virus and emotional trauma.
"It’s during that time that I did my counselling training," she says. "I had to really look after my body and I had to give myself permission to just be, which I think a lot of people in society struggle with; we’re a lot about doing, even people who are even into meditation (“I’ll do my meditation”) but being is giving yourself permission to just sit on the verandah and have a glass of water or wine."
Carolyn used her counselling training to help African refugees in Brisbane before attending a conference called 'Mental Toolbox' hosted by Paul and Mary Blackburn of Beyond Success, the catalyst for her career in coaching.
"It’s during that time that I did my counselling training," she says. "I had to really look after my body and I had to give myself permission to just be, which I think a lot of people in society struggle with; we’re a lot about doing, even people who are even into meditation (“I’ll do my meditation”) but being is giving yourself permission to just sit on the verandah and have a glass of water or wine."
Carolyn used her counselling training to help African refugees in Brisbane before attending a conference called 'Mental Toolbox' hosted by Paul and Mary Blackburn of Beyond Success, the catalyst for her career in coaching.
"I didn’t want to go but I got dragged along," she says. "I was so impressed and so excited by what I heard that when they invited people to become coach trainers, I jumped at it and I became a coach trainee. I graduated as a qualified coach after one year and then applied to be a Master Coach and was accepted. I’ve been a Master Coach with Beyond Success for nearly two years."
As a 'Master Coach', it's Carolyn's role to guide 20 or so coaches-in-training through the 12-month Beyond Success course, during which time they attend four bootcamps in Canberra and complete online units in life management, self-esteem, relationships, communication, assertiveness, finance and business.
"Everybody starts off with life management, which is all about your values, your time management, your mission statement and your goals, and then they go on to the other units that are most applicable to them," she says. "A great coach is someone who asks questions that help that person to explore and hold that person accountable for taking actions. It’s not about telling people what to do."
Carolyn finds the coaching, in addition to the workshops she hosts and the executive coaching she does through her personal business, Living Success, allows her the flexibility to have the lifestyle that's most conducive to her health and wellbeing. She doesn't work on weekends, tries not to work into the evenings and is free to take trips to Dalby with her new gentleman friend on his motorbike.
Her second marriage, she says, ended by way of mutual agreement: "We were together 29 years, we even renewed our wedding vows two years ago, but the next season of his journey is going to be pretty full-on in his business, and I didn’t want such a busy life, so we let each other go to be the best that we can be. We talk to each other almost every day. There’s still a friendship there. Definitely. He has a lovely new lady in his life – actually, they’re expecting a family in July or August. Very exciting for him."
When I tell her I believe my values are Christianity, my husband, work that's fulfilling, people and health and wellbeing, she dissects them with a knife. Apparently, most of those are not values but the outworking of values, which are more along the lines of loyalty, commitment, authenticity and creativity. The problem for most of the people she coaches, she says, is their values don't stack up to the lives they're living.
"People might say that loyalty to their family is a value, but then they go and have an affair," she says. "That tells me that maybe that's not a value for them right now – maybe it's excitement. So there's a friction there. It's important to know the difference between your intentional values and those you're living, which are what you spend your time on, your money on and what you fill your environment with."
As an executive coach, it's Carolyn's role to stop CEOs and leaders from derailing themselves. "Quite often you have people come into management because they have strengths in their personality but there comes a time when often those strengths become their weaknesses. And so I come in to help that derailment and bring them back by recognising the weaknesses and turning them back into strengths."
When I press Carolyn for tips for young women looking to improve their work/life balance, to preserve themselves on their way up the career ladder, she suggests we do a values check.
"The first thing I would ask is, what is it about climbing the ladder? Does it make you feel better about yourself? What is it about watching other people climb the ladder that makes one go, ‘Maybe I need to do that’? I think exploring the reason why you want to do it is the first thing. Was a message given to you that you’re no good – you’re not good enough – unless you have ticks in these boxes? Sometimes we think success means ‘When I get there, when I’ve done that, I’m surely going to feel better about myself and feel as if I fit in this world’. But what often happens is people get there and find it’s not enough, so they have to go to the next stage and the next stage and then they burn out or marriages fall down or you take to drink or something because there’s a lot of pain inside. So, for young people, it’s better to know who you are, what your purpose is and especially what your values are."
As most journalists know, it's often when the dictaphone has been turned off and the questions answered that some of the most interesting material between yourself and your interview subject occur: more at ease with each other, the anecdotes flow freely, the advice is forthcoming, the experiences shared.
After forgetting her makeup bag on a recent trip, and wearing none for three days, Carolyn stepped into a pharmacy and reached for the Natio skin product. When she took them to the counter to pay for them, she was told that she would be getting not only a special gift of free sample products, but a bonus set of makeup bags, too. This, she says, is the sort of thing that happens when you choose to embrace life and look at it from a position of abundance, rather than in deficit. When a friend of hers was diagnosed with cancer, she similarly took it upon herself to show her friend that there was still beauty in the world.
"One of the things I realised is that one of my values is beauty," she says. "I live in a beautiful little cottage and everywhere you look there’s beauty. I love beautiful clothes, I love a beautiful garden, I like to look beautiful when I go out. When I had a friend who had cancer, without even realising it, it was my role to take her to show her life was still beautiful, so I’d take her to beautiful craft shops and coffee shops."
When Carolyn shares that she, too, is a Christian, but has become disillusioned – not with God but the church – and so, too, her daughter, my heart aches a little. And the nagging pre-conceived judgements I have about the role of life coaching are laid aside. Maybe there's something we can learn about the need for other's help to get us to where we want to be – with God, in life, in relationships and our work?
"Let's face it, life is about relationships," she says. "It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking couples, friends or executives who are managing teams, it’s all about relationships."
Girl With a Satchel
3 comments:
Gorgeous- a value driven life is all that we all aspire to.
LOVE this quote, so thanks for sharing:
"The first thing I would ask is, what is it about climbing the ladder? Does it make you feel better about yourself? What is it about watching other people climb the ladder that makes one go, ‘Maybe I need to do that’? I think exploring the reason why you want to do it is the first thing. Was a message given to you that you’re no good – you’re not good enough – unless you have ticks in these boxes? Sometimes we think success means ‘When I get there, when I’ve done that, I’m surely going to feel better about myself and feel as if I fit in this world’. But what often happens is people get there and find it’s not enough, so they have to go to the next stage and the next stage and then they burn out or marriages fall down or you take to drink or something because there’s a lot of pain inside. So, for young people, it’s better to know who you are, what your purpose is and especially what your values are."
That was very inspiring words, yeah i agree relationship is important in any thing you do its not literally love relationship but its what life can offer...
Lyle Stephens
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