A Journey of the New You – A Case Study on Transformation Coaching With Self-Compassion

A Case Study By Christie Chua, Transformational Coach, SINGAPORE

A Journey of the New You

My client, in this case, the study will be referred to as “Client L”. L started her coaching journey with me at the end of 2022. She was clear on what she was unhappy with in her life, but she was unsure what to do next. This uncertainty and fogginess frustrated her. She started to wonder why she was not driven in her work as much, and why she did not seem to have direction. “I feel like I am levitating and flying up into the sky, and now, as I look back at what I am doing, things are so different; there seems to be a disconnect”. She started to question what her purpose was, and she was seriously considering the possibility of leaving the industry she had been working in completely.

In this case study, I journey with L as she rediscovered what was important to her and clarified her values and beliefs. Together, we uncovered her challenges and dived deeper into what was holding her back. As we are still on our coaching journey together, we are currently identifying ways for her to face her challenges head-on, and we are actively monitoring if the strategies we devised are working for her, as she moves forward in her life.

A Journey About the Client

Client L has been working professionally in her industry for more than 15 years. She is currently part of an equal partnership company with three other business partners, where she specializes in creating training programs and mentorship. On her off days, she loves to read and ride her bike. On rare occasions, she might devote her time to small projects which allow her to build and create things. L is spiritually grounded in her faith, and she goes to church regularly. Although, she has confessed that if the week was particularly tough, L would choose to stay home over going to church, sheltered in the safety of her bed to recuperate. “We are humans, after all,” she says. L is an introvert, and she enjoys going on her silent retreats which allow her to re-energize and re-center herself.

The Fundamental Issue: Where Did My Drive Go?

At the start of our coaching journey, L shared that she seemed to have lost interest in her work, even though her portfolio was created especially for her. I shared with L an image. It was a line drawing of a bicycle that had “purpose” as the front wheel, and “passion” as the back wheel. Created by a visual marketeer, it came with an accompanying description “Purpose sets direction while passion keeps you going when you hit the ‘dip’… 

Passion without purpose is going nowhere fast…

Purpose steers and passion propels. Get clear on your purpose. Find your passion.”

As an avid cyclist, the image of the bicycle resonated with her. It kickstarted the conversation surrounding what she felt was passion and purpose, and how she felt it was connected to her drive.

Passion + Purpose = Drive

In her career, she felt that she used to have both Passion and Purpose which gave her the drive to pursue exciting career trajectories and passion projects. But after more than 15 years of freelance work, mixed in with full-time work in commercial institutions, and now with her own company, she felt that she had neither. She questioned why she was not as passionate about her work, even though she was doing something that she felt she was good at.

We started to uncover a hard truth – in her company, she felt limited by her business partners, and she felt she was not given a chance to contribute fully. The more she had these feelings, the more she felt unmotivated and frustrated. It started to make her question her abilities, which made her contribute even less. Imposter syndrome started to creep in.

• “What do you think is behind that feeling of being limited?”
• “Pause, and take a step back –what are the reasons for your business partners to want to limit you?”
• “If you had the opportunity, how would you approach it differently so as to not feel limited?”

As we explored these questions, L realized a few things:

1. her working style was very different from that of her business partners
2. she internalizes a lot more than openly discussing her process
3. her business partners may not know they are indirectly giving her stress

With these realizations, L started to rethink ways how she might be able to connect better and work with her business partners. She realized that honest communication with her business partners was key, especially if they had different working styles. Her “ah-ha” moment was when she remembered that they all were working towards a similar goal – to make this company work.

We also took a moment to reflect on how she could approach herself with more self-compassion, to understand which moments she was being hard on herself, and how to overcome those difficult times when she felt unappreciated or under-utilized.

Moving forward from these explorations, she felt she was clearer about her purpose, but she was still unsure if she was still as passionate about her work.

Rediscovering Her Passion – Should I Stay, or Should I Go?

Over the course of a few sessions, the main question in L’s mind was whether she should continue in the industry, or if she should switch to a different industry completely.

In the process of uncovering what was truly important to her, as well as what was causing her unhappiness, it soon became clear that it was not the actual work that was the issue. She was unclear about what was of value to her and what was of importance to her. As such, I devised an exercise for L to help us better understand this.

In a table, L was to list out all the things she’d done in the past year (both work and personal). For every item she listed, she had to rate on a scale of 1-10 her satisfaction level, comfort level, motivation level, and consumed energy level. Using the data that she gave, the graphs that were charted told an interesting story.

Together with the graphs, the following reflection questions were shared with her to probe further into what was important to her:

1. Focusing on all the work that had the highest satisfaction and motivation scores, yet had the highest level of consumed energy – what do they have in common? Were they mean to you and why?
2. What type of work gave you the most satisfaction? Were they aligned with any personal values, and if so why?
3. Looking at how the different aspects of your life are stacked up against one another, what are some of the learnings that come through for you?
4. Looking at the various work items, which items would you keep and which would you drop?

Through our discussions, we arrived at the following statements:

1. Her work in the industry is still meaningful for her.
2. She was invigorated and energized by work that centered around training and teaching. She felt particularly drawn towards one-to-one interactions with trainees which allowed her to cater the training session for her trainee’s needs. This gave her a great sense of fulfillment and satisfaction.
3. Her family was very important to her – she would consistently show up for them even though her work might be all-consuming.
4. She valued moments when she was able to work on herself. But she needs to be able to create that space more intentionally.

The exercise reminded L that she which aspects of her work she was passionate about, and which were of more importance to her. She made an important realization: an underlying belief was throwing her off course – she was very hard on herself and had very high expectations for the quality of work she produced. This caused her to doubt herself and she constantly questioned her abilities to create training programs effectively.

Where’s My Instruction Manual?

During her time in university as well as her earlier working career, L shared that there was some form of structure that gave her a sense of security and certainty. There was a semblance of direction and what the outcome would be. Even while doing freelance work, she was clear about what the outcome would be. Now that she has her own company, and while she has main focus which was on training, there was uncertainty – what are her long-term plans for this training program? Her self-doubt was also starting to affect her morale, and she was starting to lose her vision for the program.

To help her visualize, I likened her long-term plans to construction drawings. As she liked to dabble in building and creating, I encouraged L to think of the various elements required to build and create her long-term training program–what materials will you require, how many of each might be needed, what bolts, nuts, screws or nails would be appropriate, and more importantly, how to do all of these various elements fit together?

• “What is this new thing that you are hoping to build?”
• “What is it looking like?”
• “What is the one thing in this project that will get you out of bed daily?”
• “What relationships or allies do you need to cultivate so that this can be successful for you?”
• “What internal shifts might need to occur within you to sustain these relationships in order for you to meet with your desired outcome?”

We are still in the process of populating her own ‘instruction manual’. Concurrently, we are also starting to identify challenges and potential pitfalls and have started to compile a ‘troubleshooting guide’.

As part of a larger plan for L to achieve success in her work, she identified the need to maintain a more balanced lifestyle. She realized she had a tendency of being completely consumed by her work. As she identified earlier in her values exercise that her personal life was equally important to her, she wanted to ensure that she would make time for herself (to read, exercise and reflect), her family as well as her friends. As such, she requested that I be her accountability partner to help check if she was able to stick to her plan.

Not All Days Are Good Days

As Robert Burns wrote, “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry”. Issues will come up, things will happen, and we may not be able to fully execute what we plan. For L, she started to realize the difficulty in maintaining her plans and she wondered if they were even doable at all.

We approached these setbacks with curiosity and kindness.

• “What do you need right now?”
• “What are the stories that are regularly playing in your head? What is the one story that doesn’t support you, which you can interpret?”
• “If there is one tiny change that you can make to chip away at the obstacle, what would that be?”
• “What is something kind that you can say to yourself when you most need support?”

Together, we also analyzed what were challenges to our action plans. By understanding the circumstances surrounding the setback, we were better able to identify if the plan was truly unachievable, or if she had to make certain intentional shifts to better support the larger goal. Through this process of analyzing, we were able to sift out which were real issues, and which were not. This was useful to help keep her self-doubts at bay, as she was more aware of the reasons for what she deemed as ‘failures’ on her part. More importantly, it helped her to stay on course.

Reflections as the Coach

A few reflections surfaced as I continue this coaching journey with L.

When a client approaches me with a major life decision such as changing industries, and she presents herself with feelings of frustration and hopelessness, I take extra care in bringing in self-compassion into the session as it brings the client away from the self-doubt and helps them challenge debilitating negative thoughts. By introducing self-compassion and kindness at appropriate moments in our sessions, it became noticeable when she started to feel empowered – as she embraced herself and her imperfections, to the point of being able to identify her feelings and how to desensitize the situation to be able to move forward.

Understanding my client’s interests and using them as metaphors and visual tools was highly effective in allowing her to imagine what the larger goal was going to be. As a self-proclaimed “short-term player” who lives life day by day, the visualization helped her to articulate what her long-term goal was. It was a powerful realization on her part, and it helped clarify what was originally described as fogginess on her part.

Lastly, reminding her of her own statement that “we are humans, after all” helped her tremendously in her journey of rediscovery and change. It did not downplay her efforts, nor did it give her the excuse to give up when things got difficult or when she felt misunderstood; what it did do was take away unnecessary pressure and stress that was not useful to her larger goal.

A Journey: Her Faith and Her Belief

L and I are still in the process of working through her journey. She is continuing to work with her company and her business partners as she feels that pulling out and changing industries at this moment may be premature. With clarity and a long-term plan in mind, she has renewed sense of purpose and is showing up at work with more passion and determination. Concurrently, and when she has time, she is exploring ideas on how she might be able to bring her skills to other fields and industries, which brings more hope and meaning to her in general. While she trudges through work and its challenges one step at a time, she strives to bring balance to her life through moments with family and friends. But most importantly, she is now intentionally finding moments in her everyday life to ensure she re-centers and grounds herself to her faith and her belief.

References

David, Susan (2017), Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change and Thrive in Work and Life, Penguin Life Random House, UK.
Daweck, Carol S., Ph.D. (2016), Mindset. Ballantine Books Trade Paperback Edition.
Goldsmith, Marshall (2013), What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. Profile Books Ltd.
Neff, Kristin (2011), Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind To Yourself, Hodder & Stoughton.
Neff, Kristin, Ph.D.&Germer, Christopher, Ph.D. (2018), The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook, The Guilford Press.