Pausing to celebrate

Earlier this month I received confirmation that I'd graduated from my coach training program and am now a PGCC credentialed coach. This credential, which stands for Professional Goal-centric Certified Coach, is part of my qualification for an International Coaching Federation credential as well. For someone launching her own coaching practice, this is a significant milestone in establishing my credibility and qualification for the services that I'm offering.

When I received this completion email, I was travelling out of town with one of my kids for an appointment. So I kept the news to myself until I could get home and celebrate in person with my husband and both kids. It was important for me to share the news with them first, since they have been my greatest support on this journey. While I waited those couple of days with this happy secret, I had a chance to reflect on everything that went into reaching this milestone.

A post by a peer in my coach training cohort primed me to reflect on all the pieces that added up to this milestone. I already let him know that I was going to borrow inspiration from his post, so here it goes:

• 169 hours of experiential learning

• Hundreds of pages of reading

• 8 months of peer coaching with 14 sessions as coach and 14 sessions as coachee, plus 32 sessions observing

• 17 additional peer sessions for extra practice

• 9 discovery sessions leading to relationships with 7 practicum clients

• 33 practicum coaching sessions

• 10 hours of mentor coaching

• 1 final coaching session during our assessment weekend

• 1 final paper to summarize my experience and its relation to the theory and framework I learned

• Building relationships with 29 peers, 2 instructors, 5 mentor-instructors and my mentor coach who have all taught me so much about coaching and about myself

I can add a few extra things to this calculation:

• Travelling 632km from home for a year of adventure

• Countless transit rides, bike rides, and kilometers on foot while exploring an amazing city

• Visits from a couple dozen friends and family who helped us balance the best of being locals and being tourists

• A full school year at a new school for our two kiddos

• Over 300 hours of French language education at two different language schools for me

• 20 hours of education and mentoring plus 60 hours developing my business plan and pitch for a small business grant to launch my coaching practice

• Hundreds of hours of work to implement that launch plan since March 2023

And, of course, there's all the time I spent preparing for this opportunity - researching the coaching field, applying for this coach training, interviewing, celebrating getting accepted, packing, and shifting our family's lifestyle to make space for this immersive year of education.

When I reach a major milestone, it's often at the end of a lot of work and change, and I find I'm usually tired and ready to be done. So it's easy to get swept up in figuring out what's next rather than what just happened. I'm glad I took the time to do this calculation and think deeply about what just happened and how much I got out of the experience. I'm sharing this reflection here so that I can look back at it in the future when I need a reminder of what my family and I just invested and how much we got out of that investment. And I also hope it can inspire you (and future me!) to take some time when you hit a milestone: pause, reflect, and add up everything that you put into your latest accomplishment before you move on to the next thing.

If you want to work on reflection and gratitude, I'd like to help. Book a Discovery Call so that we can get to know more about one another and how coaching might support you as you reflect and use that insight to plot your path forward.