Clear The Fog
Working with a coach holds a sacred space to help you recognize, explore and learn. You'll learn strategies to disempower your internal dialog of the 'inner critic'. Regular sessions help you dump your cluttered brain. Your first goal will be to develop a keen awareness of your experience and gather data. These thinking tasks are often difficult when your brain is constantly swirling in thought and unregulated emotion. Weekly sessions help you clear the fog, sort through the clutter and bring into focus what you need to do. Clarity helps you prioritize how and when you will start, focus and complete.
Flexible Framework
Coaching meets you where you are today and works with your style and idiosyncrasies. You'll approach problems with curiosity, build your own awareness, apply scientific principles that are running behind the scenes, and experience deep insights. You'll explore tension in your life, and how you initiate, engage, and complete tasks. Processing helps you externalize ideas, so you can see clearly how to create systems, build practices, and form habits that help. You'll learn to pause, pivot, repattern, remember, act and succeed.
Focus & Finish
Coaching creates a sandbox of curiosity. We explore obstacles through open dialogue. This helps you identify what is in the way so you can address it. Weekly sessions help you lean into challenges, explore creative solutions and make decisions. Then you'll set goals and create micro rewards for the small steps you take toward goals. Consistently applied, this framework is the formula for plasticity. This practice is what your brain needs to do to create future wins. You save time, money and avoid costly mistakes by focusing and finishing what matters most.
I Believe...
I believe self-acceptance is at the root of success, joy, and fulfillment in life.
My mission is to be a catalyst for self-expression and acceptance.
I help you embrace who you are, stand in strength, embolden your brilliance, and support how you're meant to serve.
The world needs you to function at your best.
Together we'll access the power of the pause button. You'll unplug shame, clear obstacles, and move forward with integrity. Coaching will help you lean into the struggle, tap your superpowers, pivot, get results, and minimize the damage caused by ADHD symptoms. Weekly sessions help you clear the fog, design a flexible framework, nail your unique flow formula, and activate with purpose and power.
Now's an ideal time for Coaching if you are
- Willing and able to take action to change your current circumstances
- Unsure of a plan of action and what priorities should come first but open to options
- Overwhelmed with possibilities but stunted with inactivity and indecision
- Confused about what you need to accomplish and what is important
- Willing to try on a growth mindset and approach a journey of many steps
- Stuck and need to get in action and want to have someone to help you work through all of your ideas and plans
- Ready to invest in yourself and a structured approach to awareness and action
- Willing to develop curiosity, build awareness and trust yourself.
ADD/ADHD
Learn & Leverage ADHD
Whether or not you're diagnosed, coaching with a certified ADD/ADHD Coach helps you build awareness and creatively explore how your condition shows up. The ADHD Flow Method™ (image below) provides the framework to shape our sessions. We'll follow a 3, 4, or 6-month program to help you find clarity, create a flexible framework to focus, and build accountability to finish. You'll investigate your 'shame frame', quiet your inner critic, and develop practices as a habit structure.
Late Startup
Systematize & Sell
Coaching helps you stay focused on the fastest ways to make money consistently. Although many entrepreneurs struggle, the key to success is your ability to market and sell your products and services. You'll take the steps NOW to get clients and STOP wasting time and money. Coaching will help you design a profitable and sustainable business that supports your lifestyle. You'll avoid the pitfalls and save precious time and money.
Advancing
Growing & Scaling Your Business
When you're growing or advancing your existing business, you're juggling it all! It's time to monetize your time and get help with the rest. Coaching helps you streamline, systematize, price, package, and find help so you can delegate non-money tasks with confidence. You'll build efficient systems, clear the log-jam of doing everything yourself, and regain your time. Coaching helps zero in on what you need to do to grow.
Coaching is not recommended if you are
- Actively in a crisis in your life, career, or in a primary relationship (if so, please seek therapy at this time)
- Unwilling to use curiosity and AWARENESS as indicators for long-lasting transformation and change
- Transactional thinking, or wanting a quick fix, silver bullet, magic pill or 'one thing you really need' to make life work
- Not ready to take full accountability for your current circumstances
- Not willing (or don't have time to) devote thinking and action to trying new things
- Unable to devote significant time and attention (up to several hours weekly) to plan, implement new behaviors, and reflect
- Not ready to let go of 'shoulds', narratives, and 'already-always' ways of being
- Stuck in fear and reactivity (if you are, seek therapy instead)
- Invested in perfectionism, being right and being an expert to get things done (fixed mindset)
- Resistant to partnering, collaborating and exploring opinions, ideas, and guidance from others
- Invested in staying where you are now rather than taking deliberate actions to change your situation
- Too financially strapped to see coaching as an investment in yourself and your long-term results
Why Work With A Certified Coach?
While most coaches have some training, many pursue accreditations through programs designed to help them deepen coaching competencies. Competencies are gained in a variety of ways. Work history, life events, and even relationships can become significant influencing factors in establishing competencies. That's why it's important to know your coach's back-story, and see if it resonates with you.
Coaches who have pursued industry credentials will ascribe to a Code of Ethics established by the International Coaching Federation (ICF). These ethical standards were developed over decades of client-facing work. They cover many aspects of a complex, layered, nuanced relationship between coach and client.
According to their site [ICF Credential-holders are part of a self-regulating group of elite coaches who provide accountability to clients and the coaching profession as a whole. They pursue and complete rigorous education and practice requirements that provide unquestioned legitimacy to their commitment to excellence in coaching.] Therefore, ICF-trained coaches (and those trained in ICF-accredited programs) share ethics that protect you.
My original company (Sane Spaces) offered organizing and productivity services. After about five years of working in all environments with all types of clients, I realized my favorite organizing clients were entrepreneurs and small business owners. And, when I began working exclusively with them, I was amazed at the number of creative entrepreneurs who also had been diagnosed with ADHD!
So, when I put it all together, I realized that coaching high performers and entrepreneurs was my sweet spot. Once I saw that clearly, I was credentialled through the Institute for Applied Coaching because that coach training program emphasized competencies to support high performers with brain-based conditions. My coach training evolved over several years and emphasized the essential strategies that helped people become more successful with conditions such as ADHD, depression, and anxiety. I credentialled in 2017 as a Certified Organizer Coach, and then again in 2020 as a Certified Productivity Coach with the Institute for Applied Coaching.
Fast forward to today... I work with entrepreneurs and professionals. Some are men, some are women. Some are diagnosed and some are not. BUT today's small business owners feel like they have ADHD because of the many hats they wear. Their struggles mimic the struggles of those who live with ADD/ADHD. Here are some things to look for when considering hiring a coach. You can review my program's ICF credentials here.
Why Work With A Certified Coach?
While most coaches have some training, many pursue accreditations through programs designed to help them deepen coaching competencies. Competencies are gained in a variety of ways. Work history, life events, and even relationships can become significant influencing factors in establishing competencies. That's why it's important to know your coach's back-story, and see if it resonates with you.
Coaches who have pursued industry credentials will ascribe to a Code of Ethics established by the International Coaching Federation (ICF). These ethical standards were developed over decades of client-facing work. They cover many aspects of a complex, layered, nuanced relationship between coach and client.
Introducing the ADHD Flow Method™
I developed this model after years of working with professionals with ADHD.
This picture helps to bridge awareness and understanding of HOW we will work together.
With a certified Organizer Coach, you get the best of both worlds. Learning the unique superpowers (as well as idiosyncracies) that can show up for people with ADHD, we meet regularly to get you focused, organized, and productive. We work on the following 'big agenda' items as we co-create strategies that truly help you:
- Clear the fog - Sometimes finding clarity is the hardest thing... a coach helps you see through the fog to what's important
- Establish a flexible framework - We work do explore routines and establish (or refresh) individual habits that HELP while working to eliminate or minimize those that hinder your success
- Focus - We use the AEC Model (Awareness - Engagement - Completion) as a framework to help you locate where you then engage regularly with actions that matter and move you forward
- Finish - You will begin to see the 'method behind the madness' as you complete tasks, get traction, and enjoy more results more quickly.
When you learn strategies to clear the fog, establish ways to stay engaged, and a framework for success that is flexible enough to respond to daily twists and turns, you can focus on the very next step and more reliably finish what you start.
Neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to change in response to feedback. In coaching, we work to build new feedback loops by focusing first on awareness. You do not just 'have' an experience, but have the ability to learn from your experiences and therefore shift your perceptions. In coaching, we build skills to help you move from sensation through perception. We help you "zoom-in" and "zoom-out" from your experience to provide feedback. This allows you the opportunity to shift actions and repattern old (and sometimes not useful) habits. This helps you enhance your focus, reframe your work and life activities, and take 'right' actions more often. This process moves you incrementally closer to your goals, and shift your focus to successes!
If you've ever wondered how coaching may help you, I offer a complimentary Discovery Call to explore where you are now, and what it might be like to work together.
The only way through it is through it.
Be right where you are and start today!
Clear the fog and establish best practices that help you repattern habits.
With a consistent framework, you'll take more right actions and finish more often. Results are inevitable.
Cena Block, Founder Sane Spaces, LLC
Certified ADHD Organizer Coach and Productivity Consultant
The Difference Between Coaching and Therapy
I often am asked about how coaching compares to therapy. In many ways, they are similar, yet they are different. Both professions center on ongoing, confidential, one-to-one relationships between the client and practitioner. Clients come to therapy or coaching wanting change, and both professions support significant changes that occur over time. However overlapping characteristics between therapy-counseling and coaching can foster disagreements. Here are the main differences between coaching and therapy.
In therapy, people are often referred to as patients or cases. Therapy tends to focus on mental health and often focuses on diagnosing an identifiable issue (depression, anxiety, OCD or other condition) that interferes with one's daily functions. As such many insurance policies provide some coverage for seeing a therapist. Therapy tends to look to the past to resolve current feelings, explores the roots of behavior, past pains or unconscious issues. Therapists help their clients heal from trauma or negative experience. People often seek therapy to cope or come to terms with something that happened in the past. They're often seeking tools to handle emotional issues that stem from past trauma. Counselors offer directions, guiding the conversation. Therapy may involve medication, adjunct therapies, and coordinate additional services.
Coaches assume a holistic view of clients, seeing each person as naturally creative, resourceful and whole. Coaching meets clients in the present, assuming clients are well-equipped with the skills and talents needed to reach their goals. Coaching helps clients look at what's in the way now, starting from where one is. Coaching assumes clients are accountable, responsible and empowered. To be effective, clients need to remain open to shifting perspectives. Life coaches help clients notice current behavior and thought patterns and ask questions to help their clients change those patterns in order to move forward. Clients receive ongoing support as they do the inner work necessary to create life transformation. Coaching empowers people to find their own answers and solutions to their problems. Coaches give non-directional feedback, often in the form of asking questions. However, since it does not sit in the field of mental health, it's seen as optional, not prescriptive. And although some employers pay for coaching as a potential 'reasonable accommodation' specifically for ADHD and other brain-based conditions, many coaches do not accept insurance.
Coaching is a powerful method to support you in making the changes you want to make in your life. If you want to work on present issues and get the support to break through your limiting beliefs, then coaching may be right for you!
On the other hand, if you'd like to deal with past trauma, then seeking a qualified, licensed therapist is likely a better fit for you at this time.
Approaches To Coaching
There are many different methods of coaching. Some people benefit greatly from one-on-one sessions to meet their own goals, while others love working in groups.
You can choose a structured group program (group coaching) or a 1-1, private coaching package.
In a private coaching agreement, you set the agenda for each session, and create your own goals and homework. We meet regularly (weekly, bi-monthly, or as you book), and you work in between sessions.
Group Coaching programs are typically extended timelines, more affordable and help you achieve specific business goals, launch projects, and build your branding.
Because business marketing is similar across any business, (each business must know their customer, products and packages), group programs offer structure. For instance, if you're working on business planning or business marketing, a group program provides blueprints to help you hit the milestones you need to accomplish to nail your marketing message.
Niche Coaching
Many coaches distinguish their services by client type. Finding a niche is a way to distinguish ideal clients. A niche is a specialized segment of the market for a particular kind of product or service. My coaching programs are designed specifically to meet the needs of certain client niche's. This helps coaching work because clients receive targeted resources and learn from each other.
There are 3 different niches that gain the best results from working with me.
- Busy entrepreneurs in the late start-up to early growth phase of business who need to systematize and get their time back.
- Professionals and business owners with ADD/ADHD wanting to increase their results and save time.
- Professionals in life transition or wishing to transition careers or launch a lifestyle business in the next 18 months.