The Martha Beck Coaching Summit is coming up in a few weeks now, and I’m getting excited to gather with our tribe. The hugs alone are worth the cost of entry. More importantly, we’ll all learn new things and meet new people, and have a gay old time.
- You know you’re at a good conference when you’re able to allow yourself to be vulnerable, and explore new things
- You know you’re at a great conference when you rise and fall in your sense of who you really are, what you really know, and what you can offer the world when you return.
Martha Beck Summit is one of those conferences. Your heart is on your sleeve. Your heart in on the line. And your emotions can feel like a roller coaster ride. I like to call these emotional ups and downs “switchbacks” like you find in a steep mountain road, going up and going back down. The road heads up and right, then switches back, right again, and then the switchback. You’re still going up, but you’re holding on for dear life. We will have switchbacks between pride and shame, between a sense of comfort and one of discomfort, between feeling included and sometimes excluded. Between feeling stylish and out of place. There will be some status seekers and some who don’t. Many of us will feel fearful of looking stupid because we can’t remember someone’s name, or feel left out when the table is full. Many of us will be elated when we master something new, or feel embarrassed when everyone else seems to know about a tech platform we haven’t heard of. Some will drink green smoothies to fit in. Others will feel shy in a bathing suit. We’ll all try to stay in our own business and we’ll all fail once or twice.
It can be hard in the course of four days to remember who you are when you’re at home. And when you get home, it can be hard to remember who you thought you could become.
If you like to keep current with who you are in the midst of all the socializing and new techniques and training, I’m your gal. I never thought of it this way before, but that is what I require in order to be present and capable in the midst of a great conference – to be current with myself. To remember my agenda, my needs, my self-care and my joy in being in San Diego, in the middle of the worst winter in over 10 years, with the best selection of humans – the Martha Beck life coaches and cadets. So if you’re looking to keep current with yourself, I have two offerings that come straight from my heart.
- I’m leading a freewriting session with prompts and exercises on Saturday morning at 7am. There’s no cost and there will be a sign up sheet at the hotel. IF we can get everyone in a car (I’ll have one) I’d like to drive to the beach (stopping for coffee, of course) and write there. Join me, and you’ll see yourself on the page. (“Hi!”)
- I’m also co-leading a post-summit workshop with Wendy Kranz, called Lightning in a Bottle. On Sunday from 2 to 6pm, we’ll let ourselves unwind and channel ways to capture meaning from our spinning thoughts. This will be a great way to go home with the story you believe in at the end of this awesome summit, and capture the lightning that is the love, the ideas, and the motivation we all store up from all those encounters, conversations, models and of course, hugs.
You can read more about Lightning in a Bottle by clicking on either of the linked titles. If you sign up today you can still have the Early Bird bonus of an extra hour of coaching from either me or Wendy Kranz – just because you let me write to you once a week, and I’d like to share more time with you. When it comes to switchback emotions, the most important thing to realize is you’re not alone. I’m feeling them, Martha’s probably feeling them. Everyone around you is holding on tight until the next switchback comes and they can float away on a conference high. That’s part of what makes it a great, exciting conference. I hope to meet you there, and make some lightning.