My biggest existential coup is that my sucking, cloying attraction to social media has vanished. I have written in the past about leaving Facebook. This may be another one of those posts – only time will tell. But I know something is different, so I am writing from where I find myself. Something has fundamentally shifted and this I can’t deny. This is key, this shift. This is more incidental wellness.
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A Conversation About Rest
There are so many cultural beliefs about rest. While a myriad of self-help books exist around the concept of work-life balance, there is little space for a true and honest conversation about what it means to truly rest and be rested. While many can recall the experience of restedness in our minds and bodies, social…
On the Hard Days – A Podcast Interview
I had a wonderful opportunity a few months back to talk about the somatic element of giftedness and the implications of not teaching our gifted kids to connect with their bodies. Megan is doing some wonderful work with her own podcast, On The Hard Days – Podcast & Community, and it was an honour to…
Self-Attunement Coaching + Dialectical Being, Explained
I have been supporting individuals in a number of capacities for many years now. I’m a small business owner (www.applecheeks.com for those who are curious), and I was also a certified Whole30 coach (www.whole30.com) for a while. In 2020, I decided it was time to earn a coaching certification so I could begin to focus…
How Do I Know if I’m Ready for Coaching?
You are ready for coaching if you are in acceptance of your past and what has happened to you, and are ready to move forward in spite of your past, using it as your jumping off place. While the past is obviously relevant to the present and the future, excavating and examining it belongs to…
On Agency
In any given moment, we have choice. But what are the factors that allow us to see that there is choice, when our conditioning drives us to hold ourselves harmless and pawn off consequences to external factors beyond our control? One critical factor is being able to tolerate multiple states within our own experience. Even…
Turning Down the Volume on Negative Self-Talk – Lessons from Sesame Street
Trying a vLog format instead of writing. Let me know your thoughts! The Sesame Street video I reference is embedded below.
Why What I Think Matters Less Than How I Think
Today I began my first intentional step on the road to becoming a more organized thinker. In November of 2020, when I enrolled in my coaching course, I was hoping that it would provide me with unprecedented (relative to my experiences with formal education) levels of intellectual challenge. It turns out that the methodology of…
Setbacks and Disappointments
Setbacks and disappointment – What do we do when faced with these unavoidable circumstances? We could whine, complain, self-flagellate, blame others or ourselves. Or we could choose to lean into the understanding that this is life. The Stoic approach to life appeals to me on so many levels. Before I began to actively learn about…
My Great Brain
Do you remember the moment when you first became aware of an aspect of yourself that you continued to appreciate throughout the course of your life? Did you notice something in another that you were then able to see in yourself? Did you discover that you were exceptional in one area? Did you discover something…
We Must Have Order
The language is shifting again.Inhuman behaviours get normalized.Science stands in for god.One signals their virtue by way of conformity,A cute swatch of fabric covering a petrified face. Blend in.Disappear.Masks make right.Amplify the rhetoric.It is dangerous to oppose.Do not allow your individuality to emerge.You might get sick.They might come for you instead. Goosestepping off the sidewalk,Two…
What Happened When I Stopped Complaining and Started Listening
This weekend marked a full two calendar months since I left Facebook, for good. I remember a day when not checking it for a day felt like a massive test of will. Now, the idea of entering back into that particular drama-ridden fray leaves me dyspeptic. My friend looked at me the other week and…
Ilana Grostern Coaching 