Mission: Find the Facettes

Since I was a little girl I wondered what my mission was. I moved from one opportunity to another without having a guiding direction. The only direction I had was to get me to Paris. But beyond that I didn't know what else I was supposed to do. 

I remember reading What Color is Your Parachute, doing all of the exercises and still coming up blank. 

I knew I liked art but didn't feel I was an artist. I wanted to help artists. I wanted to show off and expose their work more. But did that make me a gallerist? An art dealer? 

I explored those tracks a bit but I wasn't passionate or connected enough within the art world and didn't like the feeling of the auction houses, the galleries. It just wasn't for me.


But I did like reading and writing though about creative people. I started working as a journalist interviewing artists and designers and creators and eventually started a blog highlighting the work of hidden Parisian artisans. 

I got so much satisfaction out of digging around exploring the city, discovering a little showroom, knocking on the door, speaking with and learning about the particular gifts that someone had, and then weaving all of my discoveries into a story that honored their craft and gave them a platform for shining and spreading their light even wider. 

When I think back now, I was already on my path toward becoming a coach. And the mission I have today is like an older cousin of the mission I had back then.

In my work as a coach, the crowing jewel is the moment that the facettes of the inner diamond inside of my client start to sparkle. 

I feel sometimes like a archeologist who is digging around, extracting and removing the earth that's collected around a mysterious and enigmatic treasure. 

The treasure has always been buried in the earth, but the layers of soot accumulated over milions of years has stifled its shine.


My mission, my ultimate mission as a coach, is to help my clients feel and find those facettes inside of them so that they can then dust them off, cherish them, polish them and start letting them shine even brighter and wider with the world. 

I am grateful for you. I’m grateful for your facettes, whether they’re shining loud and bright right now or not, they’re in you and part of you and I appreciate them. 


PS. Part of my mission, once we've found my client's facettes is to work on making them stronger, brighter, more resilient and impactful. Which is why I want to introduce a new concept I have: interviewing my clients so that they can share their facettes, their innovations and their stories with you. So please join me for my first interview this upcoming Wednesday, December 2, 2020 at 12h30 CET on Instagram for a Q&A conversation in French with my client Christelle Tissot Grosset who just launched a new media platform, Müsae.

The hidden cost of under-valuing creativity

When I was a trend reporter the rule was "one is chance, two is coincidence and three is a trend." 

And right now I have three different clients connected in a strikingly, trend-specific way.

Their common connection? As kids, they were discouraged from nurturing their creative sensibilities because their families were scared about what would happen if they decided to pursue those paths professionally.

It sounds counter-intuitive, right? You've got a kid who devours four books a week, a kid who's exceptionally gifted at music, a kid who has a passion for collecting and transforming objects, but instead of feeling excited as a parent, you feel dread.

You see when you come from a family where science, math, law, etc are the gold standards, where they're held high above anything else, it's hard as a parent to get behind the idea of developing your child's creative side. 

The discouragements, for the most part, come from fear.  "What if she become an artist? How will she support herself? Ahh, scary, no!"

But let's play a game of "Fast Forward A Few Decades," shall we? 

Your kid has the degrees, the fancy title, the safe job, but then she starts to feel completely and totally out of whack and wonder "How did I get here?" "Who was calling the shots?" "Why did I decide to climb this ladder?" 

What's the most obvious risk of being discouraged from nurturing your creative sensibilities most of your life?

The number one I've seen is the deep sadness in silencing that special spark inside of you that's the source of so much joy. That deep rift creates a hole in the heart that looks to be filled elsewhere. 

Which can lead to some other consequences I've discovered when people search for value in ways unrelated to what flows naturally:

• They lose their confidence in themselves and their ability to trust their intuition because they believe that their natural talents are worthless (literally worth-less) than other pursuits that were (and continue to be) much harder for them to excel at.
   

• They latch on to a system of reward and recognition that's outside of themselves, detached from their inner compass and emotional foundation. That system's usually about extreme effort and external signs of value that can easily lead to over-exertion, emotional exhaustion and a feeling of complete misalignment. 
   

• They forget that they already know what they like, what they're good at, what comes naturally to them, and that there are untapped possibilities for them within those worlds.

So what happens next? How do we unravel that onion and find our way back to the creative joy?

The number one stop is identifying the thoughts in your head that are telling you you're not doing it right. That you're not disciplined enough. Responsible enough. Hard-working enough. That's a telltale sign there's something stinky going on under the surface that's creating the misalignment.

Because when you peel the onion back you're bound to find that when it comes to doing the things that flow naturally, that give you pleasure, that you're innately good at, the responsibility, discipline, and effort aren't an issue. 

Do you ever feel irresponsible, undisciplined, not-good-enough?

What are you doing, or not-doing, when you say that about yourself?

When did those thoughts first appear in your mind?

And on the flip-side, what do you do naturally and without struggle without any voices telling you you're not doing it right?

Book a call and we can discuss! 

Much love to you today.

Zeva

Do you know your secret super powers?

The little town in the south of France where my mother-in-law lives has this amazing tennis club with five outdoor courts surrounded by mountains. 
 

And each summer the town rents the Turon, an old stone barn that’s been converted into a rustic court-side café, to a man named Terry.

Locals as wells as vacanciers like us swing by the Turon to have lunch, grab a drink, catch up on local gossip, and watch the action on the courts. 

But to be honest, the real reason we all regularly visit the Turon is Terry. 

Terry is the glue that makes the community stick. The grease that makes his famous home-cut fries crisp. 

Terry knows everyone. He knows what they do for a living, where they live, what they drink, the way they like their steak cooked, what music they listen to, who they’re dating, married to, living with, divorced from, etc. 

In coaching speak, Terry’s “super power” is knowing people, also referred to as shmoozing in New York speak. 

It’s not his job, but it’s what comes to him without effort and what he does better than anyone else. 

People rarely know what their super powers are. And even when they do, they can’t understand what makes them so special and valuable because they do it as naturally and easily as breathing.

But one evening this August I saw something I’ll never, ever forget: I saw Terry’s super power save someone’s life. 

Minutes after a visiting player in the local tennis tournament finished a match, he sank into the couch in Terry’s Turon, slumped over, lost consciousness and stopped breathing. 

Luckily, one of the other players milling about moved him onto the ground, ripped off his shirt and starting giving him CPR.


I saw Terry outside pacing, his eyes in a panic and his face pale as a sheet. 

All then he suddenly broke into a sprint, running across all five tennis courts to the farthest end of the field. “Where the hell is he going?” I wondered. 

Seconds later a women came running out of nowhere. 

Anaïs, I later found out, was the new doctor in town. She rarely came to the Turon but her husband was playing mine that evening and she decided to take their two-year-old daughter out to the courts to watch them play. 

As soon as she arrived on the scene Anaïs took over the CPR, ordered for the defibrillator and briefed the pompiers who quickly arrived. 

Each of her moves had the ferocity and focus of a wild animal on the hunt. She was fast and instinctive. And when the man started breathing again, she let out a dramatic victorious sigh that rippled through the air. 

While Anaïs saved the man’s life in an absolutely stunning way, the subtle hero of this story is Terry’s natural genius. 

Had Terry not known that Anaïs was a doctor and that she was randomly on the courts that day, this story would have ended tragically. Terry’s superior schmoozing saved someone’s life. 

What a powerful reminder of how unexpectedly valuable your natural genius can be, and how the human chain of knowledge and action can produce miracles. 

Sending you lots of love today.

PS. I highly recommend taking a first responder’s course if you haven’t already. I found it to be incredibly empowering because it demystifies worst case scenarios and gives you some actual tools and protocols to follow if danger strikes. Here’s where I took mine: https://www.protectioncivile.org/

PPS. Do you know what your super powers are and how to make sure you’re taking advantage of them daily? If not book a discovery call with me so we can discuss.