by Heather Plett | Aug 1, 2013 | Uncategorized
What do a human rights lawyer in Zimbabwe, a psychologist who’s a wealth management specialist in Los Angeles, a former pastor training to be an art therapist in rural Manitoba, and a manager in an international tech company in Chicago have in common?
They’ve all gained something from my coaching.
What else do they have in common? They have a longing to make a difference in the world and to lead from a place of greater authenticity, deeper spirituality and more courage.
All three of these people (and all of my other clients) already had a great deal of wisdom long before they came into contact with me. They are lifelong learners, committed to doing good work in the world. They are strong, compassionate, and they have a lot of vision for how to make the world a better place. So… if they already had all these things, what did they need from me? They needed someone to ask the right questions and create the right environment to help them find their deeper truths, their authentic longings, and the next steps in their journeys. They needed clarity and support, and they needed someone who would challenge them to be the best versions of themselves.
That’s what I do for my clients – ask the right questions, create a safe environment, encourage them, and then nudge them into the places their hearts are already longing to take them.
My coaching work is not about creating something out of nothing – it’s about excavating the stories you already carry, the wisdom you might have buried under your own self-doubts, and the longing that has been waiting for you to give it space. It’s also about moving the blocks out of the way and challenging the stories that keep you small.
The deepening journey…
In Falling Upward, Richard Rohr talks about the deepening journey of the second half of life, when we leave the comforts of dualistic thinking (our black and white, rules-based world) and self-absorption, and move further into ambiguity, trust, and concern for the common good. This is a journey to our True Self, and it does not come without a struggle.
My coaching is about that journey to the True Self. I won’t take the struggle away, or make it easier to get to your True Self (because there is much to learn in the struggle and taking it away would not do you any favours), I’ll simply help you be more present, have more clarity, and take a more confident step onto the path.
In that journey to our True Self, you’ll begin to find yourself emerging into one of the leaders the world is longing for. I’ll help you understand what it means for you to be a leader.
“A leader is anyone willing to help, anyone who sees something that needs to change and takes the first steps to influence that situation.” – Margaret Wheatley
When I say that I coach leaders, it means that I coach anyone willing to help. Whether you lead from a place at the boardroom table, the kitchen table, or the garden bench, the world needs your willingness to help. You simply need to show up and hold your place in the circle.
If you are willing to help, but you’re afraid to call yourself a leader, I’d be happy to work with you.
Back to school…
September is back to school time, when we put away the flip-flops, clean out the backpacks, sharpen the pencils, and get ready for another year of learning, growth, and challenge. It’s a good time of year to commit to the new things that want to emerge in our lives. It’s a good time to consider what our next journey will look like.
September is also the time of harvest, when we gather the good things from our gardens, enjoy the feasts of Thanksgiving, and freeze and preserve what we’ll need for the long winter months.
Even if you’re not going back to school, September is a good month to invest in your own growth and learning, gather the fruits of your personal harvest, and contemplate the next steps in your journey. It’s a good time to invest in coaching for your own growth.
Invest in yourself…
This September, consider investing in yourself by working with me as your coach. To make that a little easier, I’m having a “back to school” sale.
Book a one-time coaching session for only $75. That’s 25% off the regular price.
Even better (because deep work takes time)… Book three sessions for $195. We’ll get really juicy in three sessions and I guarantee you’ll have a few a-ha moments in that time.
OR… sign up for the Fall session of Lead with Your Wild Heart, and take the journey in community with other learners. You’ll get the extra benefit of sharing in the stories of others who are also deepening in their leadership and self-discovery.
Back to School Sale ends August 23, 2013.
Note: I incorporate elements of a gift economy into my business model, and so I’ve created something called Karma Coaching. If you are doing important work in the world and believe that you would benefit from my coaching, I don’t want to let limited financial resources get in the way. Find out how you can benefit from the gift of my coaching, or participate in the gift economy by supporting other world-changers who want coaching.
by Heather Plett | Jul 1, 2013 | Uncategorized
I make mandalas, write in my journal, paint, do a bit of yoga, and sometimes meditate. All of these things ground and centre me, but my primary spiritual practice is walking in the woods.
I feel closer to God when I’m in the woods than anywhere else I can think of. Yes, God shows up anywhere (and one of my most meaningful God-experiences was during a three week hospital confinement when I lost my son Matthew), but I have the easiest time quieting my mind and opening my heart when I surround myself with the stillness and beauty that the woods offer me. Add to that the body engagement of walking, and I feel like I’m Eve in the Garden of Eden, walking with God at my side.
For three weeks now, I feel like I’ve been banished from the Garden. This broken foot means that I can’t walk and I can’t even drive myself to a place where I can sit at the edge of the woods.
It’s been agonizing. I know it sounds like an over-dramatization, and I know that there are people in the world with much bigger problems than mine, but it’s been really, really hard. Harder than I would have imagined. I am just not good at sitting still.
It’s been especially hard because all of this long hard winter, while I watched my Mom die and my husband come near to death with a heart attack, I kept telling myself “at least it will be Spring soon and I will be able to find some healing in the woods. I will sit on my familiar stone bench and pour out my grief to the birch trees. I will stand on the riverbank and the Dancing Goddess Tree will offer her strength. I will follow the deer into the woods and they will whisper ‘everything is going to be alright’.”
When I first heard the doctor say “broken”, my thought was “does God hate me? WHY?! Why does another shitty thing have to happen just when I felt like I was on the road to healing?”
And then for the next three weeks, I wallowed in the misery of my exile. I tried to turn to my other spiritual practices – I made one pathetic mandala, I wrote a page or two in my journal, and I got halfway through a collage – but nothing worked. Everything just served to make me feel more restless than before. God felt a million miles away, and my wild heart felt frantic, like a caged animal.
On Thursday, the doctor finally said I was free of crutches and could walk reasonable distances on my boot. On Sunday I practically begged my husband, “please drive me to the gate at Henteleff Park, drop me off, and I’ll text you when I’m ready to come home.”
The park gate felt like the door to my cage. Not too many steps down the path and I felt like I had finally come back home. Out of Exile. Back to the Garden of Eden. Back to a place where God walked with me.
I limped as far as my favourite stone bench in the middle of the birch trees, and I laid down on my back, staring up at the fluttering leaves. The breeze on my face was God’s kiss. The birds sang God’s love song. “Welcome back to the Garden,” they sang. I started to cry.
I don’t know if there is a “why” for the breaking of the foot. I don’t really believe that “everything happens for a reason and that the universe conspired to break my foot to teach me an important lesson.” I can’t get my head around that kind of fatalism. I do, however, believe that we are meant to work our way through difficult times and then find meaning in the darkness that helps us better understand and appreciate the light. For me, at that moment, lying on my back on a stone bench, feeling like a refugee who’d returned home after a time in exile, I found some profound meaning that was much bigger than a three week period of restlessness.
More than simply a moment in the woods, it suddenly became for me a metaphor for my life. Since that three week period in the hospital more than a dozen years ago, when God showed up in a series of strange and mystical encounters (and during which time I eventually lost my son Matthew), I have been working my way back from exile. In the hospital, after a night of wrestling with God, I woke up to how far away from my authentic Self – my wild heart – I’d become. Like the last three weeks of my life when I couldn’t walk in the woods, I’d been living like a caged tiger, exiled from my home in the wilderness.
There was a void in my life, and I knew it, but instead of trying to break free of the cage by seeking out spiritual practices and meaningful work, I was attempting to fill it with money, a prestigious career, material possessions, food, etc. In the hospital, when all of those things were suddenly unavailable to me, I finally recognized the futility of my search. I suddenly knew that to fill the void, I would need to find the path back to my own wild heart, back to Spirit, and back to a more authentic life. Right then and there, in the hospital waiting for my son to make his appearance, I started that journey and have been on the path (with a few detours now and then) ever since.
A few years ago, when I was beginning to understand the meaning of all that, I read the following quote from Peter Block and knew instantly that he was talking about me.
“Leadership is about rearranging the chairs, getting the questions right, putting citizens in front of each other and then knowing what’s worth focusing on. The leadership I’m longing for is the leadership that says my number one job is to bring people together out of exile, out of isolation, and into connection.” – Peter Block
My experience in the hospital and in the years following, in which I gradually returned from exile by quitting my government job, traveling the world working for the cause of justice in non-profit work, and then quitting that job to teach, write, and host conversations, have been preparing me for the work of bringing people together “out of exile, out of isolation, and into connection.”
Coming out of exile means a returning to that which is authentic in all of us. It’s about living wholeheartedly, in tune with each other and the earth. It’s about being in community and extending love and compassion to each other and to ourselves. It requires of us that we turn away from the destructive, disconnected, disenfranchised lives of independence, competition, and over-consumption. It’s a return to simplicity, a return to our hearts, a return to our bodies, a return to each other, and a return to the wild.
This is the work I do now, and this is what I invite you to in my coaching, writing, teaching, and workshops – a return from exile. I know what it’s like to feel trapped and separated from the one thing that will make you feel whole. I know what it’s like to long for a more authentic way of living. I know what it’s like to feel like you’ve gone so far from home you can never return.
I also know what it’s like to return to the wild and finally feel alive again.
If you’re ready to come back from exile, let me help you. After a busy few months, I am finally accepting new coaching clients. Perhaps you’ll be one of them? Contact me and we can start with an exploratory conversation.
And if you want to be in that circle of chairs that Peter Block talks about, learning more about the kind of leadership that brings people out of exile, join me and my colleagues at a one-day Art of Hosting workshop.
p.s. For the past couple of years, I’ve been working on a memoir about how my time with Matthew changed my life. In recent months, I’ve been stuck, knowing that something was missing. Laying on the bench in the park on Sunday, I think I finally found the thread that will tie the book together.
by Heather Plett | May 11, 2013 | Uncategorized
Around this time last year, I finished what I thought was my final edit on my book before starting to figure out how to get it published.
Not only did I finish it, but my friend Segun shared the first 5 chapters of it with his advanced graphic design class and gave them the assignment of developing a book design. I visited the class and was shown more than a dozen versions of what the book could look like if I brought it into print. It was a thrilling moment. I even reserved the url for the book title, confident that I would get it into print one way or another.
I was close… so close… and then life got in the way.
It’s tricky, this business of writing a memoir. Life is messy and unfinished, and it’s difficult to tie it up with a pretty bow at the end.
Last year at this time, the book was called “Butterfly at the Grave”. Now I wonder if I should call it “The Unfinished Business of Living, While People around You are Dying”.
The book has been growing in me for more than a dozen years. It’s the story of my stillborn son Matthew and the huge impact his short life had on my life. It started growing even before he was born, when I was sitting in the hospital waiting for him, on an unexpected sabbatical from my life. During those three weeks, I wrote in my journal “some day I will write a book and it will be called ‘The Journey of a Woman’.”
The problem is that while the book was gestating in me, other deaths happened that changed my life just as much. When I started writing it two years ago, I was pretty certain it would focus solely on Matthew, but then one day I realized that I couldn’t ignore the impact that my Dad’s sudden death had on my life.
And then… while I was trying to wrap it up… well, Mom got cancer. I wrote this in the last chapter, just before finishing the first draft a year and a half ago…
“On Mother’s Day this past year, I was having an especially horrible day. After spending the afternoon with my mother who was experiencing the ravishing after-effects of her first chemo treatment, I came home completely spent and emotional. It finally hit home just how devastated I would be if I lost my Mom. Our relationship hasn’t always been an easy one, especially in recent years when I and my siblings had to get used to the idea that she married again after Dad died and things shifted fairly significantly. And yet, despite the challenges, I love her deeply and I don’t want to lose her.”
You know the rest of the story. I lost her. So… how can I now end the book on that note when I know just how much her loss means to me?
I’m not sure. This book still wants to be born, and at some point I just have to say “finished”, but I suspect it’s not finished yet. I think a few more chapters are going to emerge before I finally see it in print.
Life is unfinished, imperfect, and messy. I suppose that, even when it’s in print, this book will always be unfinished.
Grief is a class we never get a final grade in.
by Heather Plett | Apr 23, 2013 | Leadership, Uncategorized
“I’m finally beginning to realize that I’m a leader.”
Those are the words I heard not long ago from a woman who’d just finished the four month leadership program I was co-facilitating. She was an incredible woman doing great things in her community, including lobbying to save a local nature trail, but she’d never thought of herself as a leader.
I hear those words all the time, especially from women. I’ve been hearing them recently in relation to my online course Lead with Your Wild Heart. “I love your program… but… I’m not sure I’m a leader.” Almost without fail, these women are gifted in art, teaching, community transformation, homemaking, earth stewardship, etc., and yet they don’t see leadership in what they do.
Part of the purpose of Lead with Your Wild Heart is to re-imagine leadership for our time. I believe that the need in the world has changed and that we now need to see leadership through a new lens.
I believe that the leaders the world needs now are those who know how to host conversations, imagine change, paint, dance, sing, write poetry, love generously, live in right relationship with the earth, build community, imagine new ways of using and honouring our limited resources, teach, and play.
As Margaret Wheatley says, a leader is “anyone who is willing to help.” The world needs us to show up and help right now, with whatever gifts we have to offer.
I’ll be hosting a free call on Wednesday, May 1st, at 2 p.m. Central on Re-Imagining Leadership for Our Time.
The call will be an exploration into a new way of defining leadership that fits the paradigm we are now living in. Your questions and ideas on the subject will be more than welcome. One of my deepest beliefs about effective leadership is that it involves hosting meaningful conversations that help surface the wisdom in the circle. Your wisdom is welcome in this circle, and so are your doubts, questions, and curiosity.
I’m happy to be joined in the call by some of the members of my Wise Heart Wisdom Circle. Those who’ve confirmed so far are Desiree Adaway, Julie Daley, and Lisa Wilson.
Sign up below and you’ll receive the call information in your inbox. I look forward to our conversation!
ALSO… over on Facebook, I’m collecting “what if” questions about leadership to inspire us for the conversation. Scroll down below the sign-up form to see the ones already gathered, and add your own to the comments of this post.
by Heather Plett | Apr 5, 2013 | Creativity, growth, journey, Leadership
Three and a half years ago, I brought myself a promise ring.
I was visiting Banff at the time, after a business-related road trip through Western Canada. Visiting Banff always brings up mixed emotions for me. I love the beauty of the place, in the middle of the Rocky Mountains, but it holds a sad story from my past. I lived there the summer I turned 19, and it wasn’t a particularly happy summer. I was in that “trying to decide whether to stay safe in life or to take more chances and risk getting hurt” phase of early adulthood. Sadly, I let the things that happened to me that summer convince me that safe was a better option. I gave up the plans I’d had to change schools and move to another province and I went back home to nurse my wounds and play it safe.
One of the places that always brings up deep longing for me is the Banff Centre. When I lived there, my roommates and I sometimes went to watch visiting performers, and each time I went, I’d think “oh, if only I were talented enough to spend time at a place like this!”
When I visited three and a half years ago, I drove past the Centre and started to cry. I cried for the young woman I was more than twenty years earlier who believed she wasn’t talented or worthy. I cried for the hurts that young woman had already suffered and had yet to suffer. I cried for the long journey I’ve had since then, learning to trust both my worthiness and my longings, and learning to be both resilient and courageous through the hard times.
When I drove back into town after visiting the Centre and the resort where I spent the summer cleaning other people’s mess out of hotel rooms, I wandered through the downtown and dropped in at a jewellery store. In a flash of inspiration, I bought myself a promise ring with a blue chalcedony stone. (I later learned that the chalcedony speaks of spirit and trust and is known as the Speaker’s Stone, the stone of one who must measure his words. It encourages reflection and meditation, its gentle radiance preparing us for action but helping to hold back words we might regret. The great Roman orator, Cicero, is said to have worn one around his neck.)
Later that day, I sat in a cafe with my journal and wrote the following promise to myself:
I promise:
– I will take more chances.
– I will believe that I am an artist.
– I will trust my ability.
– I will look for opportunities to paint and make art as often as I can.
– I will sign up for another class or workshop that stretches me.
– I will honour the muse.
I couldn’t go back and make those promises for my 19 year old self, but it wasn’t too late to make them for my 40+ self.
Last week, in the last lesson for Lead with Your Wild Heart, I invited participants to make a commitment to themselves and to honour it with some kind of gift, like a ring. That tweaked my memory and I went back to find the original post I wrote about the promise ring I’d bought for myself. I started crying all over again – not because I was sad anymore for my 19 year old self, but because I am delighted for my 46 year old self that I can honestly say that I have kept my promise to myself.
I have done just what I said I’d do. I took more chances (quit my job and started a business), started making more art and taking art classes, I’ve been honouring the muse, and trusting my own ability.
Nothing to date has felt so much like an honouring of that promise as the creation of Lead with Your Wild Heart. Nothing has felt so much like it is emerging out of my most authentic, most beautiful, most Spirit-guided self.
I’ve just opened registration for the second offering of Lead with Your Wild Heart, and I can say that I am thrilled beyond expectation with how beautifully it has turned out. This has been an exercise in trusting my own wild heart, and I know that it will serve as a gift to all those who take it into their own wild hearts.
And now… can I tell you a little secret? I’m dreaming of taking some version of Lead with Your Wild Heart to the Banff Centre for Leadership Development. I don’t know yet how to make that happen, but I’m sharing the dream in hopes that will help me get closer to it.
I’m trusting my wild heart and seeing where it leads.
What do a human rights lawyer in Zimbabwe, a psychologist who’s a wealth management specialist in Los Angeles, a former pastor training to be an art therapist in rural Manitoba, and a manager in an international tech company in Chicago have in common? 
