A Case Study By Marija Kose, Startups Coach, GERMANY
Reframing a Perspective: Inability to Find Time for a Creative Hobby
My case study is about a coaching session with Mark (not a real name), a peer coach. Prior to the session, I had had a few sessions with Mark and since there was good chemistry between us, we decided to be coach friends and have a session every other week.
Mark would bring a different topic to each session and typically we would come to a good outcome. In this particular session, Mark wanted to focus on his inability to find time for a creative hobby of his, something he used to do when he was young, and something he had been trying to take on again more recently. The hobby was figurine making.
This essay explores how by helping Mark shift his perspective, the coaching session empowered him to realign his priorities. This ultimately led him to a place of lightness.
Reframing a Perspective
The session
Main players
Marija, myself, a peer coach
Mark (not his real name), a peer coachee
The Issue
Being a peer coach, Mark had the topic ready and we were able to come to an agreement pretty quickly.
He started telling me about this hobby and how he used to appreciate it when he was younger, as it brought out his creative side. However, finding himself engulfed in the hectic demands of his professional and personal life, left his figurine-making hobby gathering dust on the shelves of neglect. When he got his job as a developer, he somehow managed to stay in touch with his creative side, so he gave up on this hobby not having the time for it. However, now that his job has changed to a managerial one, he has found himself disconnected from his creative side.
He had been trying to start it again, but he struggled to find the time. He had brought this up in a previous session with another coach, and although he had come up with a plan during the session and tried to take action, it had not quite worked. Hence, he came to our session wondering why what he had decided in the previous session had not stuck and what else he could do.
Initially, I thought we could approach the session by invoking the Action vs. Delay power tool. Mark has been delaying this for a long time, he kept buying new figurines thinking that would make it easier for him to start again. However, the figurines were piling up and he was feeling even more deflated and dissatisfied with himself as he was always finding an excuse not to do this.
However, I wanted to dig deeper into what was causing this delay and procrastination, hence, how I approached this was focusing on the importance of this hobby for him. Although his default answer was that starting this was important to him, he simply did not have the time needed to dedicate to it. When I dug deeper into the reasons why he was not finding the time, it came up that he had a few other “hobbies” he was prioritizing instead. Meeting with friends and volunteering as well as spending time with the family. Then we discussed the importance of all these hobbies and the fact that time is a finite resource, and this is where he has a bit of an aha moment.
The other hobbies that were occupying his time involved someone else and as such it was easier for him to keep those engagements going, as they were a fixed slot in his calendar. However this was something he needed to do on his own, and as such he could schedule a time that he would do this. However, talking through the whole thing, he decided that he did not have the time and that prioritizing the other hobbies made more sense for him at that point in time. Up until that moment, Mark had not realized that subconsciously he was prioritizing what he wanted to do more. But somehow he had failed to acknowledge that his preferences and priorities had shifted and that although he somehow still wanted to make figurines, he found other things more important and even more enjoyable.
This was something he discovered during the session. And with that realization, he felt much lighter. He felt that what he thought about himself – that somehow he had been pushing this away and had been procrastinating – had been making him feel really bad about himself. Now he realised that he had been procrastinating as in his mind and heart, this hobby was not as important to him. This brought on a huge amount of relief and he did feel significantly lighter at the end of the session.
I used Reframing a Perspective as a Power Tool, by asking questions about the importance of this hobby. The fact that he had this in a previous session and somehow did not manage to stick to the plan and strategy he decided on in that session, told me that there may be a deeper issue here. He had been struggling to keep it up/restart it because it did not matter that much to him. Hence, the session helped him to flip his perspective from feeling down and disappointed with himself as he was blaming himself for something he could not do, to finding a piece of himself.
In the session, I was able to pick up on his feeling of disappointment with himself and the emotions that that produced in him. He started the session by being very down and then when he discovered the reason why he was not finding the time and pushing this back, he felt much better in himself. By focusing on his emotions and also picking up the aha moment he had, I was able to focus on the WHO. I also left him a lot of space, which he was happy for his thoughts to take.
In the end, Mark felt significantly lighter and said that he would go away and see how it felt to put this all away. We agreed on meeting again and checking in on this topic in our next session.
The Transformative Potential of Coaching
In conclusion, Mark’s journey exemplifies the transformative potential of coaching through ICA’s power tools. Using the “Reframing Perspectives” power tools, Mark shafted his perspective and was able to see his issue from another point of view, which he had not been able to do previously.
This case study underscores the profound impact coaching can have on individuals, guiding them to realign their priorities, embrace their passions, and lead more fulfilling lives.